Vignettes
by godfreyraphael
Summary: Snapshots and insights into the life of a girl and her Yeerk, as told from the Yeerk's perspective. This will be mostly about my OC Jen Carson and her Yeerk Yemra and will take place after the war, after the Animorphs series. This was originally K but some heavy swearing in the later chapters has made me bump this up to T.
1. Foreword & Introduction

**FOREWORD AND INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR**

My name is Yemra Six-Four-Zero of the Zek Danet Pool.

I am a Yeerk, one of the hundreds of thousands of symbionts who descended upon the planet Earth with the intention of infesting and enslaving the native sapient species on the planet, the Humans, and using this new species to turn the tide of the Yeerk Empire's war against the Andalites. But I was also one of the thousands of Yeerks who had come to the realization that Yeerk-kind is doomed to extinction if we continue in our old ways of enslaving every single sapient species that we meet, that the way forward for Yeerk-kind lies in cooperation and understanding. Hence I am a Yeerk that currently resides on Earth, and I also reside inside the head of one Jennifer Yelena Carson.

You may have heard of that name before. Jennifer Carson is the human who wrote about her experiences with regards to the Nothlit State, an ill-fated attempt by disgruntled nothlits to establish a nation of their own within the United States while at the same time providing a location from which the Yeerk Empire, which is still somewhere out there in the stars, could resume their invasion of Earth. Yes, that Jennifer Carson. She is my host, and I am her Yeerk.

This story is _not_ about Jen's trials and tribulations with the Nothlit State and subsequent encounters with the Yeerk Empire. In fact, this isn't even one single story at all. This work is a collection of stories and moments in the life of one Jennifer Carson as told through the perspective of the Yeerk in her head. I have decided to write these stories as a way for humans and other sapient beings to understand that we Yeerks, while we are very much bonded to our hosts, still have our own distinct personalities, thoughts, and worldviews. Humans write about their stories and lives all the time. Controllers (beings who have been infested with a Yeerk), both former and current, have written and talked about their stories to the human public. Even Hork-Bajir have managed to relate their own stories for the consumption of the human public, which is positively hungry for stories from all perspectives (as long as it is either well-written or if it conforms to their own ideas of what a particular story should be like). But we do not hear about the Yeerks themselves taking to either pen and paper or computer keyboard to tell their own stories. Yeerks, particularly the ones with hosts, more often than not only manage to get an occasional sentence or paragraph in the stories that their hosts have put forth, so it has been a bit hard for humans to know about how the Yeerks experience the world in their own words. But now I am here to set the record straight.

This is not to say that the Controllers who have had their stories published are actively denying their Yeerks the opportunity to speak for themselves; on the contrary, I fully believe that these Yeerks will tell their own stories, but in their own time. For me, that time happens to be now.

As I do during Jennifer's stories, Jen will sometimes interject and add some perspectives and commentary of her own to the stories that I shall relate. _**(Jen: If the text of the story starts looking like this, it means that I'm doing just that; adding my perspective to Yemra's stories.)**_

The stories that I am about to tell you come from a very wide time frame, from the time that I first infested Jennifer to the present day. They also cover a wide range of topics from the mundane day-to-day life of a female human who happens to have an alien observer residing within her head to issues like the Nothlit Question and the rights and safety of human-Controllers to the second attempted invasion of Earth by the Yeerk Empire. I do not intend to dwell much on stories involving the Yeerk Empire. Jen does a very good job of that on her own. What I intend to write about here are snapshots into our daily life, and the perspectives that I have made and gained during defining moments in Jennifer Carson's life. And I hope you enjoy the journey.

 _Mo-Bo'hugsenn Na-saltakeh'e tahlahh matane eysipah!_ (May my words and the stars open your eyes and minds!)

 **Yemra 640**

* * *

A/N: I hope you don't mind me trying out a more bookish style of storytelling that also includes things like an introduction or foreword. Think of it as this fic being actually a book that got published in the world of the Animorphs (or at least the world of my OC). Anyway, I know that this is just an introduction but I appreciate you dropping a review for it nonetheless, as well as either following or favoriting this fic (or maybe both?) Thanks in advance! - GR


	2. Senior Moments

I had always liked it, no, loved it whenever Jen shampooed her hair in the shower. I do not know what it was about the act of shampooing in the shower that I loved but I do know that I love it. Maybe it has to do with the water from the shower head drumming on Jen's skull like raindrops on a tin roof, or the fact that Jen loves to give her scalp a good long massage to really get the shampoo down to the roots of her hair. Or maybe it's because of Jen's singing in the shower. Jen actually has a nice singing voice, something which she has put to good use by being part of the local church's choir. Jen is also part of a band, and they have actually won a few awards, chief among them "Best Rammstein Tribute Act" from a few years ago. Jen and her bandmates (the majority of which were also girls; only their drummer Lester was a boy) had used their looks to surprise the competition in that particular contest; everyone was thinking that they were actually a country or folk band that had gotten lost and signed up for the wrong competition before they unleashed riffs and vocals that they had honed through years of practice, and both Jen and I believe that it was the shock factor of these three girls belting out Rammstein's German lyrics that won them the award that day.

But back to the act of shampooing being one of my favorite moments of Jen's day-to-day life. Truth be told, this particular story isn't about something that happened while Jen was shampooing her hair. No, that happened as it had always happened. No, it was what happened after Jen had come out of the bath that is the focus of this particular vignette. So Jen had just changed into a shirt and jean shorts (her regular housewear) and she had tied up a towel over her hair like a turban to dry it off when we both smelled the delectable smell of potatoes being cooked. (You smell that, Yems?) Jen asked me.

(Yes, indeed, I do,) I replied.

(Mom must be cooking fries or mashed potatoes. Wonder if I can get her to give me some?)

Something that you should know about Jennifer Carson, dear readers. She won't admit it, and she will never admit it, but Jennifer Carson is a spoiled brat and a half. Being an only child has made her the center of affection of her parents, and this had led to Jen always getting what she wanted, as long as it was within reason and her parents thought that she deserved to get the treat. Jen wouldn't get spoiled if she didn't deserve to be spoiled, like those times that Jen had gotten straight Cs during elementary, which was before I arrived at the scene to put her on the right path, which is the main reason that she will claim that she is not a spoiled brat. But I also feel like it was because I got Jen to focus on her academics that she became spoiled like she is now.

I bring this up because the clearest times that you can get to see Jen being a spoiled brat is during times when she is eating food, especially French fries and chocolate, but really specifically French fries. French fries are cut and sliced sticks of potatoes which are deep-fried and salted and is very fatty, and Jen knows this. But this doesn't stop her from eating French fries. And you will never, ever see Jen share her French fries with her friends. Jen might share her fries with her family because she knows that she will get reminded to share, but when it comes to sharing her fries with her friends, all bets are off. Jen has a sixth sense with regards to French fries; she can sense if someone is trying to reach out and grab even just one fry when she isn't looking. She could be studying or reading a book or texting or watching a video on her phone and she will still sense if someone is reaching for one of her fries, and she's not subtle in telling them off. Jen's favorite tactic to fend off fry thieves is to slap their hands away, sometimes without even looking. If both of Jen's hands are occupied then she might use a leg to kick at whoever is reaching out for a fry. She would often accompany this slap or kick with words like "Shoo!" or "No!" or even "Go get your own fries!" None of her friends are safe from this treatment; not Julia Baker, not Carina Russolini, not Sonia Torres, and especially not Lester Ivory. Even her cousin Jude Rivers gets this kind of treatment from Jen from time to time, but Jude can sometimes get away with it because he does it when the family or at the very least Jen's parents are around. Jen oftentimes still gets the last laugh though because many other members of the Carson and Rivers families can't finish their own fries and end up giving their unfinished fries to Jen. I was the only being whom Jen shared her fries with, and that's most probably only because we are practically sharing everything, even Jennifer's body. **(** _ **Jen: Jennifer's Body? Get it?**_ **)**

Like I said, a spoiled brat and a half.

Back to the story. Jen popped out of her room and walked down the hallway to the living room where her mother Eve was watching HBO on the big flatscreen TV. The movie was the one where John Travolta and Nicolas Cage switch faces and fight each other. Jen's mother has a thing for 90s action movies, and Jen says that her mother has a crush on the likes of Nicolas Cage and Keanu Reeves. Jen's mother had confided in her that it was Nicolas Cage's eyes that attracts Jen's mom.

" _Face/Off_ again?" Jen asked.

Eve nodded. "You know me, Jen," she said. "I never miss a Nic Cage movie if I can't help it."

"Hey, uh, Mom, are you cooking up some potatoes? Because I smelled potatoes when I got out of the bathroom."

Eve sniffed the air for a moment. "Yeah, I smell it too," she replied. "I'm cooking up some mashed potatoes for the Mastersons and the other families. They're coming over later tonight." The Mastersons were the Carsons' neighbors. Every other Tuesday night, the families along the street where the Carsons lived would get together at one house and have a family night. This Thursday it was the Carsons' turn to host the family night.

"Yeah, about tonight…" Jen said. "I've got soccer practice with the team this afternoon and then I gotta work a late shift at the diner. I don't know if I'll be able to make it."

"Just get home safe, sweetie, but do try to get home as early as you can. Your father's going to be home at ten at the earliest so that means that I'm going to be dealing with these people alone unless you can get back home around that time."

"Okay. Maybe I can get home by nine, if Mr. Tenkiss is in a good mood. Oh, and can I get some mashed potatoes?" Jen asked.

"I knew you were going to ask that question," Eve replied. "I set aside some just for you. It's in the little brown china bowl beside the big pot on the stove."

"Thanks, Mom! You're the best," Jen called out even as she was already walking her way to the kitchen. We saw the brown bowl right where Jen's mom said it would be, and Jen grabbed a spoon and then went over to the stove to get the bowl. "Mmm, that's really good," Jen muttered as she tucked into the mashed potatoes. I knew that physically I couldn't consume the mashed potatoes at all but I still got to enjoy it all the same thanks to my connections to Jen's mouth and nose. "Could use some more gravy though," she added.

Jen was about to walk away from the stove and towards the kitchen counter when we noticed a smaller pan with eggs boiling in water behind the pot with the mashed potatoes for the guests. "Hey, Mom," Jen called out, "are you boiling eggs for family night as well?"

We didn't hear any verbal reply from Jen's mother. All we heard was the sound of Eve's feet running on the floor, and it was only when she had arrived at the kitchen that Eve finally spoke. "Oh, my God! The eggs!" she shouted as she ran over to the stove to check on the eggs. Jen was left at the edge of the counter staring at her mother frantically checking if the eggs had been tragically overcooked or not (still eating her mashed potatoes, believe it or not). "God, how could I have forgotten about this?" Eve said to herself. "I knew I forgot about something when I walked out here. Oh, I really am getting old. And you got to see your dear mother become a senile old woman," she said with a sheepish smile to Jen after she had turned off the stove.

"Oh, don't say that, Mom," Jen replied immediately. "You're gonna be just fine."

"I know, sweetheart," Eve said. As she walked back to the living room though, we both heard her mutter, "These senior moments are going to be the death of me."

"You're not gonna die, Mom!" Jen called out. "It's not gonna happen. Mom can be so morbid sometimes," she said to herself once her mother was out of earshot.

(It must run in the family then,) I said. (In my whole life, I have never ever met someone more morbid than the members of both the Carson and Rivers families.)

(Hey, Yems, speaking of senior moments,) Jen said, (do Yeerks go through those too? Have you ever had a senior moment in your life? I know you've helped me prevent my own senior moments but have _you_ ever experienced a senior moment of your own in your life?)

If I had shoulders then I would have shrugged as I pondered Jen's question. In any case I gave Jen a mental image of a girl shrugging. (I cannot speak for myself since I am not yet, in Yeerk terms, a senior,) I replied.

(Oh, don't give me that, Yems,) Jen retorted. (How old are you, really?)

(I don't know,) I replied. (Seriously, I don't know. I don't know when I was grubbed, and I don't know how long I have been on Earth since then.)

(Come on! Not even an estimate?)

(All right, fine! I know you're going to pester me all about it for the next thirty minutes so I am just going to cut my suffering short and say that I believe, I believe, that I might be between 12 to 23 Earth years old.)

(Huh. I'm actually surprised by that,) Jen admitted. (You really think you could be at least 12 years old?)

(Yeerk cycles do not exactly match up precisely to Earth years, you know. It got to the point where we were practically using your time units back in the invasion.)

(Now that I think about it, though, it probably makes sense that you think you could be just 12 years old. You certainly act like one sometimes anyway.)

(I do not!) I retorted, and I mentally blew a raspberry at Jen, who sent me back a mental smile and said, (Thank you for proving my point.) We were both silent for a few moments and then Jen asked, (How about some of the other Yeerks though? Tarash, Yibey, Moxach, I mean. I wonder if they've had their senior moments.)

(I think it's best that you didn't ask them that at all,) I told Jen. Jen shrugged her shoulders even though she knew that I wouldn't be able to see it unless we were looking at a mirror, but I got the idea nonetheless. Jen then walked back to her room to watch some YouTube or Netflix with spoon and mashed potatoes both still in hand. We had already seen _Face/Off_ a few times before (although never in its full length, strangely enough) and Jen knew that whoever got to the TV first had first dibs.

"You know what to do with the bowl, Jen," Eve called out from the living room.

"Yes, Mom!" Jen said back.

* * *

The good thing about being a Yeerk (at least in the Yeerkish perspective; humans are somewhat bothered by this thing) is that while you can tell what your host is thinking all the time because of your connections to their brain, they cannot know a lot of what you are thinking unless you tell them directly or you actually open yourself up to them. Most Yeerks don't really see the need to let their host know what they are thinking day in and day out, letting their host know what and how they feel about something when they think it's necessary to do so. I admit to being one of those Yeerks, and for this particular instance I was glad that thought transfer between Yeerk and host brain is one-way for the most part as the thoughts that I began to entertain will certainly serve as fodder for Jen and her own thought processes. _**(Jen: I knew you were thinking about senior moments at that time!) (Yemra: All right, I'm admitting it. Are you happy now, Jen?) (Jen: Just continue with the story, Yems.)**_

In all of my years of existence, I can distinctly remember only one Yeerk who would fall under the bracket of what both Yeerks and humans would consider as a senior, someone whose age is approaching the average lifespan of their species. We Yeerks could not remember our species' average lifespan in the years since we were uplifted from our homeworld by Seerow's Kindness and then began fighting our costly war against the very same Andalites who had brought us to the stars, but recent estimates have placed the Yeerk's average lifespan at almost exactly one hundred human years. The Yeerk whom I remember whose age would be quite near to that one hundred human years' average lifespan was around ninety human years or so old, meaning that he would most certainly qualify as a senior citizen in human terms. _**(Jen: Ninety years old? This guy isn't just old, he's**_ **ancient** _ **!)**_

His name was Carger Four-Seven-Five-One. By the time that I matured from my grub stage and embarked upon the Imperial training course, Carger was an instructor in the sensory overload management course. The sensory overload course is where we Yeerks have to learn to control our instincts to observe and interact with the universe around us whenever we infest a host body. Carger, having lived as long as he has, still remembers the time when Yeerk-kind swam around in the natural pools of our homeworld and had only Gedds as our host bodies. The Gedds were sentient creatures; they had a sense of their own identity but had not yet sowed the seeds of a culture, at least until we Yeerks came along and helped the Gedds establish a very primitive agricultural society. Carger had told us newly matured symbionts that in the old days, all Yeerk-kind cared about was the fact that they could finally see, smell, sense and observe the world around them through the Gedds. But now things were different; we had to set aside our base instinct to marvel at the universe and focus on the task of getting used to controlling a host body as this was how we were going to fight against the Andalites. The Gedds, being a sentient species with the physical handicap of one leg being shorter than the other (a trait that simply does not make sense for Earth's scientists as it does not fit with their theory of evolution), was simply incapable of fighting a direct war against the Andalites, but we had new host species in the form of the Taxxons and the Hork-Bajir.

"The Gedd is where we start," Carger had told our batch of trainees when it was our turn to be taught by him. "The Gedd has basic vision alongside the standard sensory package. The Gedd's vision is practical on our homeworld, but anywhere else in the universe and the Gedd's vision is practically useless. But think about this: if Gedd vision at this state is already so overwhelming for us, how then are we going to deal with Hork-Bajir and Taxxon vision? A Hork-Bajir's vision is markedly better than that of a Gedd's, very much better. Imagine how distracting that would be? And A Taxxon looks like it has only a dozen red eyes, but in truth each of those 'eyes' is actually a thousand columns of visible spectrum-sensitive receptor cells. Each of these cells has its own miniscule field of vision that when combined together by the Taxxon brain produces vision that is paradoxically both intact and fragmented at the same time. That is an entirely different level of distractions altogether. But we cannot let it stop us or distract us from the mission. We are fighting for the survival of our species, and we cannot let a simple thing such as the marvel of sight or senses to distract our minds while we fight against the Andalites."

That was the "opening speech," as the humans call it, that Carger gave to us at the start of our sensory overload management course. But when I managed to get to talk to Carger on one of the very few off days that Yeerk trainees get during their training course for Imperial service, I learned of what he really believed in and not just what he had been told to tell us, his trainees. "Young one, if one of the sub-vissers so much as hears of anything that I am about to say then we are both going to be sentenced to starvation," Carger said nonchalantly. "I have been around for so long that I am already starting to forget what it feels like to live on our home planet. Maybe the embrace of death will finally allow me to remember those details once again. Those were the days, young one. Those were the days when Yeerk-kind was possibly at its best. Now we are an empire, and we are shoving ourselves into the heads of beings who don't want us in their heads. I know that this is what we must do now to survive, but I must say that I yearn for the days of old, when being a Yeerk did not mean that we must become a scourge upon the galaxy and the universe."

Granted, it was not a senior moment like the kind that Jen's mother had just experienced. But that was most certainly an instance of a Yeerk acting very much like a human senior: reminiscing about the old days, not caring about the consequences of non-conforming behavior being revealed to someone in power, and looking forward to the cessation of his own existence. I had never seen anything like it throughout the entirety of my time as a soldier of the Yeerk Empire and I never thought that I would ever again see anything like it until my time on Earth proved me wrong by the mere fact that I saw through both Mallory and Jen's eyes human seniors doing the same things and expressing the same views that Carger had shown to me in that brief time that I got to know him.

Having said that, I have no idea where Carger is now or if he is even alive. If he is, he would probably be 110 Earth years old. Do Yeerks even live that long? I know that there are some humans who have managed to live to 110 years old but I have never ever heard of a Yeerk living that long? If that is the case then rest in peace, Carger Four-Seven-Five-One of the Fleet Niaar Pool. You will be missed.

* * *

A/N: Apologies in advance if this chapters seems a bit disjointed. I was trying out a new style of storytelling for this story and well, it came out like this. This was also done mostly through stream of consciousness which might explain why it jumps around a little bit. Still, I do appreciate it if you can drop a review telling me if you liked it or not, and follow and/or favoriting this story also makes me happy both on the outside and the inside. I hope to improve this new style of mine through subsequent chapters though! That's all, and thanks for reading this far into the chapter! - GR


	3. Jen's First Car

"Dad, can I ask you something?" Jen asked her father, Adam Carson. It was just after Jen's third year in high school. Jen had gotten good grades in that year (not all straight As, of course, but the lowest grade that she got in third year was a flat B), and Jen was now preparing to ask her father about a promise that he had made to her during the school year. Jen was standing as straight as she possibly could while at the same time rocking on the balls of her feet because, even though we have established in an earlier chapter that Jen is really spoiled by her parents, what she was about to ask for was something much more than French fries or a toy or even a cellphone.

"Sure, what is it, Jen?" her father asked back. He was working on what Jen's memories told me were the family's income and expenses.

(All right, Jen, this is it,) I told her. (You've opened the conversation yourself. There's no more backing out of this.)

(I know, Yems,) she replied. (I'm just trying to choose the right words to say.) I could see Jen running through numerous scenarios in her mind on how this ask could possibly turn out. Some of them were more likely to happen than others, and there were a few scenarios that were so outlandish and outrageous at the same time that there was no way that Jen could surely think that about her father. Finally, she settled on a plan of action that she thought would be the best for this particular situation, and she made sure that the object in her hands was behind her and well hidden from Adam's sight and then she made her ask.

"Okay, so Dad," Jen opened, "you said that if I got good grades in school, and if I managed to pass the driver's test and get my license, you would buy me a car, any car of my choice, right?"

"Yes, that's true, so long as it's within reason," Adam replied, still engrossed in the balance sheets. "I mean, obviously I'm not going to buy you a Lamborghini or a Rolls Royce; we just can't afford that, especially not in this recession. But as long as it fits the budget, sure, maybe we can do that. How were your grades again?"

"Come on, Dad, you already know my grades," Jen replied with a nervous smile. "I got an A plus in English, A flats in Science and History, and my only B is in Math. I mean, you know me and math, Dad. Anything beyond addition, subtraction, multiplication and division is like an alien language to me. I mean, alien languages might actually be easier for me to understand because of Yemra!"

(I could do it, you know,) I told Jen. (I can teach you Galard or Yeerkish whenever you want.)

(Maybe later. But not now.)

"And besides, why are you asking me about this, Jen?" Adam asked. "It's not like you've already got your license from the mail."

"Uh, Dad, actually…" Jen trailed off, and then she held up her driver's license in front of her. Adam had to look at us twice before it registered to him that his daughter was holding up her first ever driver's license for him to see.

Adam stood up and took the license in his hands to examine it. "Is this real?" he asked. "You're not trying to fake me into buying you a car, are you?"

"Come on, Dad! You really think I would do that to you?" Jen asked back. "Just think about it, Dad. If I'm going to make a fake driver's license to show to you, sure as hell I'm not going to use that picture of me!" To be perfectly honest, the picture that was on Jen's driver's license is far from the best shot of her that she has, but then again the cameras at the local DMV have, according to Jen and her friends, a strange and uncanny ability to mess up the photos of regular people. "I'll even show you the envelope that this came in if you like," Jen continued.

"All right, Jen, I believe you," Adam finally replied after a few moments. "We'll get you your car tomorrow. Let me just finish accounting for the family expenses and then we'll go get the car you want first thing tomorrow morning."

"Okay," Jen said, who was still in a little bit of a state of shock because she had not expected this particular conversation to go so easily like this. "You said first thing tomorrow, Dad. I heard it. Yemra heard it. Don't forget about it."

"Don't worry, Jen, I never forget," her father said with a smile, and then he went back to his tax returns. Outwardly, Jen was calm, collected, stoic, but as we walked back to her room, her mind exploded into an endless squealing of glee. Jen had barely closed the door to her room before she finally let loose and began squealing excitedly out loud. "Oh my God, I can't believe it! I can't believe it!" she said out loud. "I'm finally gonna get a car! I'm gonna get my dream car!"

(Jen, you are seriously not calling that car your dream car, are you?) I asked her in a tone that was both curious and worried at the same time.

"Yems, you know that it's _my_ car!" Jen replied to me out loud. Such was her excitement that she couldn't just keep it in her mind; Jen had to proclaim it for the whole world to hear. "You've known that since the first time we saw that car driving past that car lot on the way to school. I already told you that it's going to be my car. If any car is going to be my first car, it's going to be _that_ car."

(But why does it have to be that particular car? Why can't it just have been like any other car?)

"I don't know, Yems, I can't really explain it, you know?" Jen replied as she plopped down on her bed. "You must have seen it, felt what I felt."

(I'm not disputing that you felt some sort of attraction to that car. But once again, why does it have to be _that_ car?) I asked.

"I already told you, I don't know. Maybe it's like what they say about your true love. Just one look and you know that he's the one. And I know that I want that car to be mine."

(If you're dead set on having that car then all right. I don't look like I can talk you out of it anytime soon, or ever at all. I just wonder if it's still there, though. I wonder if someone felt the same way as you when you saw it and already bought it.)

"Oh, come on, girl! Why do you have to bring a girl down like that?" Jen asked me with both physical and mental furrowed eyebrows. I gave her a mental shrug and a teasing smile (or more accurately the troll face smile although I don't think either the troll face or any other of those "rage faces" or "memes" were already around back then, but then again I could be wrong about that).

Tomorrow couldn't come fast enough for Jen. During summer time, Jen usually wakes up at ten in the morning or later but for this day, she was already up and running at eight, and she and Adam were finally on the road by nine. I believe that Adam could tell that Jen already had a particular car in mind so he let her be the navigator, leading him to the used car lot on the road to the inner city, and then finally we arrived there. Jen directed Adam to the far edge of the lot, where we had last seen Jen's dream ride when we last passed by here. (Come on, please be there, please be there,) Jen repeated over and over. I didn't say anything because if it turned out that the car was no longer there, Jen would have probably thrown a hissy fit and I would have laughed at her a little about it. _**(Jen: You're damn right I would have thrown a hissy fit if the car wasn't there! You know how long I've always wanted that car!)**_

Finally, Jen saw the car that she had always wanted parked in front of a row of other cars, and she grabbed hold of her father's wrist and physically dragged him over to where the car was. When they got there, Jen let go and then stood behind the car and spread her arms wide. "Tada!" she said. "What do you think about her, Dad?"

"Jen, is this seriously the car that you want?" Adam asked. For me, the look on his face was more towards mild surprise and wonderment, but for Jen that look on his face was more disappointed than wondering about his daughter's choice of car.

The car in question was a Ford Crown Victoria, but not just any old Crown Victoria. This particular Crown Vic was of the Police Interceptor variety, meaning that it was for all intents and purposes a police car. Sure, it didn't look like a regular police car (this particular CVPI was painted a dark red or maroon as opposed to the standard black and white paint job that you would expect of a police car) but there was a metallic bumper in front of the car that definitely gave the impression of a cop car. In fact, Jen believes that this CVPI was an undercover cop car, the kind of car that police would drive around on patrol so as not to arouse the suspicion that a marked cop car would elicit. In later years, Jen would come to tell me that the fact that the Crown Vic used to be a cop car was one of the major deciding factors in her wanting to have the Crown Vic as her first car, but at that particular moment I think it's safe to say that both Jen's father and I thought that she was crazy for wanting a used cop car.

"Don't she look great, Dad?" Jen asked with a wide and beaming smile on her face. It was the kind of sweet, charming and disarming smile that was almost impossible to say no to, and it was a smile that Jen had practiced and used on both her father and mother to great effect to get what she wanted (if she was deserving of it, of course). And it wasn't just Jen's smile that she had in her arsenal; Jen knew how to use her eyes in conjunction with her smile to disarm anyone in order to get her way. And she was using both of those to full effect to convince her father to buy her this particular car.

I saw the very momentary hesitation passing through Adam's mind as he pondered on making the choice to buy the car or not. It was only a very momentary hesitation as Adam was the more indulgent between Jen's parents, and the more supportive. Adam was the one who had encouraged Jen to go into soccer since he had been a soccer player himself in his teenage years, and he was also more likely to give Jen what she wanted although of course this would be after some discussion with Jen's mom, Eve. Adam was also the one who took my entry into the Carson family in stride, but that was also probably because any and every question he would have probably had, Eve had already asked Jen and I. Finally, eventually, Adam just shook his head in resignation and said, "So how much does this cost?"

"Oh, I'm sure you can afford it, Dad," Jen said coyly, still flashing that smile of hers. Inside her mind though, she was already jumping for joy and shouting victoriously. (I'm gonna get my car! I'm gonna get my car!) she repeated over and over in her head.

(All right, you got your dream car, Jen,) I said. (I think everyone gets the point.)

Back in the outside world, the owner and manager of the used car lot, an old white-haired black man named Big Al, walked over to the Crown Vic. "So Jen finally got you to cough up the cash, didn't she, Adam?" he asked Jen's dad.

"So you know Jen's after this car?" Adam asked in reply.

"I mean, your little girl has been scoping this CVPI out almost every chance that she gets," Big Al replied. "In fact, I'm surprised it actually took Jen this long to drag you over here and see the car for yourself, what with you spoiling her and everything. Look at her, Adam. She's practically chomping at the bit to get behind the wheel and drive this thing outta here. I remember the day I got my first car. I was just like Jen, all smiles and eager, waiting for the opportunity to final drive that Bel Air." The conversation between Adam and Big Al about their respective first cars served as a backdrop as they also haggled over the price of the Crown Vic. Meanwhile, all sorts of plans and ideas were already forming in Jen's mind as the prospect of her becoming the new owner of this Crown Vic came ever closer to becoming a reality. (I am so gonna prank my friends with this,) Jen told me. (I'm gonna roll up on their driveways and make them feel like they're under surveillance. I might even prank both Sonia and Carina by driving this to school and then telling both of them "ICE is here for you two!")

Needless to say, that was one of the most memorable summers Jen and I ever had, and it wasn't even just because of Jen's pranking of her friends with her car. Jen even let me drive the Crown Vic a few times, which was a fun experience in and of itself because I had learned to drive alongside Jen (Mallory knew how to drive but had neither the vehicle nor the opportunity to drive herself around, so I wasn't able to acquire Mallory's knowledge of driving).

* * *

Driving Jen's car has brought back memories of when I was first assigned to Bug fighter duty. Training to fly a Bug fighter took nine Earth months, and six of those months were spent in simulators going through all of the possible battle scenarios that we could possibly face, ranging from simple skirmishes between lone Andalite fighters to actual large-scale battles against an Andalite war fleet. The rest of the training was all about learning about how Bug fighters work because, on the off chance that our fighter gets lost and crashes into a hostile planet or at the very least, a planet that isn't under the control of the Yeerk Empire, it would be very beneficial for both Yeerk and host if they could survive on said planet until help could arrive.

When I passed through (or graduated or whatever the correct term is) Bug fighter pilot training, it actually took me one more month before I was finally assigned to a Bug fighter since the production of said Bug fighters couldn't keep up with the Yeerk Imperial Forces' demand, but eventually I got a Bug fighter of my own. I was in a Hork-Bajir host at the time (her name escapes me at the moment, although I do remember that she was a female Hork-Bajir) and I was partnered with Gershi One-Five-Five of the Hym Horreb Pool, who was in a Taxxon at the time. We came from different pools (I came from Zek Danet and Gershi came from Hym Horreb) and Gershi was from an older generation that me, but the two of us formed an immediate friendship. You could say that we had nothing at all in common except for the fact that we were both Yeerks, but we both became friends anyway. In human terms, you could say that Gershi and I were the perfect pilot and wingman. Of course, I wouldn't say that we were actually perfect as the word "perfect" itself would imply, but Gershi and I had this mental connection that everyone talks about but no one could accurately describe or put into words.

I wouldn't bring up my time as a Bug fighter for nothing, though. I remember this one time when Gershi and I were out on patrol on what could be considered as a neutral or demilitarized zone between the Yeerk Empire and the Skrit Na. We weren't expecting any trouble over in our little spot of space at all because the Skrit Na were neutral in terms of their diplomatic relations with us. Gershi and I had taken the opportunity to let our hair down, so to speak (because neither Hork-Bajir nor Taxxons have hair) and talk about the daily matters of our life in the Empire, and inevitably the conversation turned to the matter of what would happen once we finally found that Class Five species that the Vissers and the Council of Thirteen always claimed would finally carry us to victory over the Andalites.

"Imagine if we did find that Class Five species," I said to Gershi (we were both speaking in Galard, but I have decided to translate the conversation to English as best as I could). "What if it turns out that their brains, their minds are like an Andalite's? What if this species, once we infest them, protest to our presence in their heads? I cannot say anything at all for the Andalites since I have never been inside the head of one or even touched the mind of one, but the Hork-Bajir! Their minds may be simpler than that of an Andalite but I have heard that a lot of them have been very resistant to us infesting them. Even my host complains about my presence in her mind from time to time, and yet there is nothing I can do about it because the Empire tells us that it is our birthright to force ourselves into the heads of every sapient species out there to establish our species as the best one there is." (Of course the discussion was much less civil than that but for the purposes of brevity, I have cut out as much of the unimportant chatter as possible.)

"Wouldn't it be much simpler if all other species out there had minds just like the Gedd or the Taxxons?" Gershi said (or shrieked and hissed because of Taxxon biology). "The Gedd are a simple-minded species, let's admit it. Their minds are right on the edge between sentience and sapience. They are aware that they are and they also know what they are. The Taxxons, meanwhile, are so driven and motivated by their hunger that it is practically the only thing that they can think about were it not for us. Wouldn't conquering the galaxy be much easier if everyone else were just like the Gedd and Taxxons?"

This was one of the few moments when Yeerks could discuss openly about matters that would be considered taboo or at the very least sensitive around Imperial ears. I know for a fact that other Yeerks think this stuff but they are all too afraid to say anything to anyone else because of the long arm of the law that could see anyone saying that the Empire might never find a Class Five species at all sentenced to death by slow Kandrona starvation for treasonous thoughts. I have also seen Vissers and sub-Vissers execute subordinates on the spot just because said subordinate disagreed with said Visser or sub-Visser's orders. Life in the Yeerk Empire was very much cutthroat, and it was actually a wonder that it has managed to survive as long as it did. You would think that the Vissers and sub-Vissers would have eliminated all of their subordinates long before they found Earth.

The fact that we regular and ordinary Yeerks could talk about these "treasonous" thoughts inside our Bug fighters never came up in the minds of our commanders. They never thought about trying to capture recordings of Bug fighter pilots talking, something that would most probably come as a shock to humans who have become used to living in such a technologically intrusive society where everything anyone says can be heard by anyone else without choice for race or creed. It was during these conversations with Gershi that I came to realize that there might be others like me who believe that maybe we Yeerks don't have to force ourselves into the heads of other species, that maybe enslavement is not the only way for Yeerks to expand the reach of our species. And it was because of Gershi that I eventually came upon the Yeerk Peace Movement once we had initiated our secret invasion of Earth.

I would like to say that this was the point in my story where Gershi and I accidentally stumbled upon an Andalite war fleet gathering for an offensive on the Nahara homeworld, but that wasn't what happened. That happened on another patrol altogether. Gershi and I completed this patrol where we had talked about the possibility that a Class Five species would have a mind like an Andalite's without incident, and we returned to our squadron's base in orbit over the Taxxon homeworld like the loyal soldiers of the Empire that we were.

Once again I must confess that I do not know where Gershi One-Five-Five has ended up, but I can say with certainty that the last time that I saw him was when he and his human host were reassigned off of Earth in the year before the Animorphs and the Andalites finally put the Yeerk invasion of Earth to an end. If ever I shall see him again then I would like to extend him a "thank you" for showing me that there are other Yeerks who believe or at least give voice to the same thoughts and feelings that I do.

* * *

A/N: Once again I would like to apologize if this chapter seems a bit disjointed and hops around at times. I am working on streamlining my thoughts and plot lines so that they are cleaner overall. As always, feel free to leave a review with your thoughts on the chapter and if you want to keep up to date, follow or favorite this story. And if you want to keep updated on all of my stories, follow and/or favorite me as an author as well. Cheers! - GR


	4. A War Flashback

(You know, Jen, you should be sleeping by now,) I told Jen as the clock struck midnight and we were once again the only two beings in the Carson house still awake.

(But I'm not feeling sleepy just yet,) Jen replied. This statement was from an adult female human, a 24-year-old with a bachelor's degree in human psychology from the University of Notre Dame. Both of us knew that she sounded like a whiny toddler by just saying what she said like that, and both of us didn't really care. (And I must say you're not sounding sleepy yourself either,) she told me. (Man, our circadian rhythms are out of whack!)

(Tell me about it,) I sighed. (Ever since you managed to get yourself into the afternoon shift for the diner, you've never slept before twelve o'clock, and now I can't sleep before twelve o'clock as well.)

(It's the price of being human, Yems,) Jen told me as we sauntered over to the sofa in front of the big flat-screen television mounted on the wall of the Carsons' living room.

(Yeah, not sure if I want to pay it though,) I said darkly.

Jen plopped herself down on the sofa, put her feet up (after removing her slippers, of course), grabbed the remote, and turned the TV on. She pressed the episode guide button on the remote and began "channel surfing", searching television network schedules for a program that she might be interested in watching as she tried to force herself to a state of sleepiness. (Oh, hey, _Forged in Fire_ is on,) she said while perusing the schedule for The History Channel (which nowadays is just called History). (I haven't seen it for a little while. Wonder what weapon they're going to have to forge for the final round.)

 _Forged in Fire_ is a human television show in which four blacksmiths (or bladesmiths as the show likes to call them) basically forge bladed weapons, most often ones that have been used by humans in their past, and then these weapons are tested by the three judges on the show, one of which is a blacksmith and another is an edged weapons recreation specialist, and the third one is a martial arts master. When she first saw it, Jen didn't really like the premise of the show, but when she actually watched an entire episode, she found that _Forged in Fire_ was pretty much like the cooking and baking shows that Jen and her mom like to watch and so she began to like the show. Jen didn't really pay any particular attention to the contestants who came on the show for a chance to win ten thousand dollars, but on this particular episode, there was one contestant who caught both Jen's eye and mine. It had nothing to do at all with his appearance and everything to do with what was in his head.

The contestant's name was Rasheed. He was 26 years old, black, and from Oklahoma City. And he was a Controller. Yes, you read that right. There is a Controller _Forged in Fire_ contestant. And Rasheed actually showed his Yeerk, Telsen Eight-Nine-One-Five, floating around in a bottle of water during his introductory talking head moment on the show. Rasheed actually physically demonstrated Telsen going in and out of his ear but said something about the producers cutting out the bits where Telsen goes out of his ear and into his hand. But since the producers didn't cut that bit out, it looks funny when Rasheed said they would cut it. Human humor, huh?

Anyway, according to Rasheed, he had been infested by the Yeerks when he was ten, which would put his infestation at around the time that the trouble between the Yeerks in California and the Animorphs were beginning to heat up. The Yeerks were beginning to take more hosts irrespective of gender or age, and Rasheed happened to be one of the first to be caught up in the Yeerks' dragnet. Telsen wasn't his original Yeerk, and in the early years of his post-war freedom, Rasheed was actually quite anti-Yeerk. His Yeerk had mentally abused him in an effort to break him down and had also forced him to recruit his other friends into the Sharing to be made into full members (that is to say Controllers).

Then Rasheed said that he began losing some body coordination, which he couldn't explain until he found out a study that revealed that a lot of humans who had been infested by Yeerks, whether voluntarily or not, suffered from varying degrees of loss of fine motor control (meaning they couldn't grip onto stuff as securely as they would have liked or that a finger or a hand would suddenly refuse to follow their commands). And then after more studies revealed that people who were infested with Yeerks as part of an experimental physical therapy program recovered control of body parts and fine motor control quicker than those who did their physical therapy without Yeerks, which eventually paved the way for the legalization of Yeerk infestation of humans (in the United States, at least) in early 2009. Rasheed applied for a Yeerk a year after infestation was legalized, and that was how he met Telsen.

I have to admit that Jen and I didn't always focus on the contestants of _Forged in Fire_ , although we did sometimes try to guess who would make it to the next round and who would be eliminated due to problems in their blades that the judges spotted. But because of Rasheed being a Controller (apparently the first one to appear on the show), I must say that I began rooting for him to not only make it through each round but also win the competition itself. But after the first round where the contestants had to make a usable blade within a three-hour period, it seemed as if Rasheed would be eliminated because the judges had found a warp in his blade (meaning that his blade wasn't straight). And then it turned out that the other contestant who looked like he could also be eliminated in the first round actually had a number of cracks in the blade which the judges determined to be unfixable in the confines of the studio. So Rasheed made it through to the next round because one of the other contestants had a worse blade than he did.

(I hope Rasheed can fix his blade up good,) Jen said to me. (I'd hate for people to think that he made it through just because he's got a Yeerk in his head.)

(You know, I was thinking the same thing,) I replied.

Thankfully enough, Rasheed was not only able to fix the warp in his blade but he was also able to turn that blade into an actual fighting knife, one that survived the tests that the judges put it through with flying colors. The judges actually praised Rasheed' finished product, saying that the handle fit perfectly in their hands and that it didn't show any signs of edge damage or chipping after being put through a wood block chopping test and an apple slice sharpness test. The other competitors had their knives suffer a bent edge and a chipped edge, and the contestant with the knife that had a chipped edge after the chop test was eliminated, leaving only Rasheed and a cowboy-looking type (according to Jen) named Colton to move into the final round.

(Now comes the fun part,) Jen said. (Wonder what historical weapon they're gonna make these guys forge.)

"Rasheed, Colton, so far, we've had you two bladesmiths make your signature weapons in our forges," the host, a large and muscular man who had once served in the American military, said. "But now we're sending you back to your home forges to recreate an iconic weapon from history. And that weapon is…" He reached for the cloth covering an object on the judges' table and pulled it off, revealing a triangular blade with what appeared to be four circles at the bottom. "…the Andalite tail blade," the host finished.

"Holy shit," Rasheed said, on camera (although of course the "shit" was bleeped out).

The host then proceeded to explain that the tail blade was a natural weapon of the Andalites that was often used in combat, most recently against the Yeerk Empire. After the Yeerk invasion of Earth, and after Andalites began to visit Earth on a regular basis, human martial artists and self-defense instructors then had the idea of copying the Andalite tail blade and turning it into a weapon that humans could also use. Oh, humans. If they can find anything that they could turn into a weapon against their fellow humans then they will definitely do it.

"Your weapon should be an effective and functional version of the Andalite tail blade, as adapted for use by humans," the host said, explaining the judgment parameters for the next round. "The tail blade must be between three to four inches at the base and three to four inches from the base of the blade to its tip. The tail blade must also have a sickle shape or hook design, four holes at the bottom for use as a grip, and at least a twelve-foot-long lanyard for use in long-range fighting. You will have five days to forge this iconic weapon at your home forges, and after those five days you will return here with your finished tail blades, where the judges will put them through a series of grueling tests, after which one of you will be declared the _Forged in Fire_ champion. Good luck, bladesmiths. We'll see you in five days."

The two remaining contestants then began to forge their versions of the Andalite tail blade in their homes. Rasheed the Controller said that it was very coincidental that as soon as a Controller appeared on _Forged in Fire_ , the historical weapon that they would have to recreate would be none other than the Andalite tail blade. Meanwhile, Colton, the other contestant, admitted that he didn't know anything about either Andalites or even Yeerks until the tail blade had been revealed and its history explained. Personally, I couldn't believe that there was one person in the United States who could possibly not have heard of either an Andalite or a Yeerk as late as the year 2016, but then again there was also no explanation for the amount of stupidity that both Jen and I have seen on Facebook and Twitter.

Throughout the episode, whenever he was working on a forge, Rasheed would cool himself down by pouring water all over his head, and I knew that this was because Telsen was telling him to cool down. Yeerks are very sensitive to heat; personally, there have been times when I demanded Jen to put on a cap or a hat or even sunblock just because a bit of sunlight was shining down on her. I can't even imagine how I managed to get through those times that Jen was playing soccer under the noontime sun or that spring break in Miami; I sincerely felt like I had been boiled alive in her skull in those times. Heck, even just looking at the flames coming out of the forges on the TV was making me uncomfortable.

Finally, the five days were up, and Rasheed and Colton returned to the studio with their respective tail blades. There were three tests that would determine who would be the _Forged in Fire_ champion for that episode: a strength test, where the judge would throw the tail blade at a wooden wall to test the strength (obviously) and integrity of the weapon; a sharpness test, where the judge would then cut through a number of salmon to see if the tail blade had retained its edge following the strength test; and finally the kill test, where the judge would use the tail blade to inflict as much damage as possible on a pair of ballistics dummies. Both Rasheed and Colton's tail blades made it through the strength test without damage, although when the judge mentioned that Colton's tail blade felt heavy in his hand, Jen said (Ooh, that's not good for Colton. If they're neck and neck for the rest of the tests, that heavy blade of his could very well be what gets him eliminated.)

(At least it will be a very good match to the end, if it's going to keep us guessing to the very end,) I replied. And it did indeed turn into a neck-and-neck contest. Both tail blades did very well in the sharpness test, slicing through the four salmon bodies cleanly and in half. And then it was time for the kill test. The judge who regularly does the kill test explained what he was going to do to test the tail blades: first he was going to swing the tail blade with the lanyard at the first dummy, replicating the standard opening slashing attack of Andalite tail blade combat; and then he would throw the blade at the dummy like a throwing knife or a shuriken. Then the judge would slip his fingers into the four rings at the bottom of the tail blade (which basically made the tail blade a sharper and more dangerous brass knuckle) and use it to stab and slash at the second dummy. The results were very much bloody and gory, as these kill tests usually turn out to be. Both blades performed well in the kill test, and the judge praised both blades but he also spent some time praising the lightness and balance of Rasheed's tail blade, and he capped it off with his signature statement: "Your tail blade… will kill."

"Oh, that's really what I wanted to hear from you, Doug," Rasheed said.

The test then went off without a hitch for Colton's tail blade as well, although like the first judge, the third judge also mentioned that there was a weight and balance issue with Colton's weapon although, because it did well in the kill test as well, it will kill. (Yeah, looks like Rasheed's gonna win this one,) Jen said. (When the judges say that your blade is heavy, that usually means you're going to lose.)

And she was right. Rasheed won the _Forged in Fire_ episode and the ten thousand dollars, while Colton's tail blade did not make the cut. In fairness to Colton though, he did really make a great replica of an Andalite tail blade. It just so happened that Rasheed made it better. Even Rasheed himself was surprised that he won the whole thing. Both he and Telsen had only ever seen the tail blade on actual Andalite tails (or at least the brief glances that the vast majority of the American public got to see of these Andalites in their natural morphs and not in morph); they both had no idea that people had actually made their own version of the tail blade, although Rasheed said that he was not really surprised since humans could and would turn just about anything into a weapon. "It's also an honor to be the first ever Controller _Forged in Fire_ champion," he concluded. "I may not have wanted to have a Yeerk in my head all the time but now here I am, and it's still very much a great accomplishment."

* * *

That night, I found myself unable to sleep. Jen was already in bed, snoring and curled up around one of her many stuffed animals. I had disengaged myself from her brain as I usually did if she fell asleep before I did but I could still feel the microvolts of electricity flowing throughout Jen's sleeping brain. Watching the third _Forged in Fire_ judge swing around those tail blades and slash and stab those dummies _**(Jen: His name is Doug Marcaida. Look him up; he's really badass.)**_ had brought up my own memories of seeing the Andalite tail blade in action, and that was probably why I found it very hard to sleep.

It happened when I was still in my Hork-Bajir host, before I had been transferred to the invasion force destined for Earth. In fact, this was before the Empire had even discovered Earth in the first place. Visser Eleven's Blade ship and its associated fleet had been on an expedition for a Class Five species when, while scanning a system on the edges of Hawjabran-controlled space, two Andalite Dome ships popped out of Z-space literally almost alongside the Visser's Blade ship. Visser Eleven ordered his fleet to jump for the nearest Yeerk-controlled planet, but the Dome ships were able to follow Visser Eleven's Blade ship to the Ssstram homeworld. The Yeerk defenses around the planet had managed to disable both Dome ships' communications systems meaning that the Andalites couldn't inform their superiors on their own homeworld that another species had fallen to the Yeerk Empire, but then the Andalites made the decision to attack our forces on the Ssstram homeworld, reasoning that since they were already there, they might as well liberate the Ssstram from our control and oppression.

The Bug fighter wing to which Gershi One-Five-Five (remember him?) and I were assigned had been deployed to the Ssstram homeworld at the time, and we had been on the ground for five Earth weeks when those two Dome ships popped out of Z-space a few miles above the planet's atmosphere. As the shredders on the Dome ships began picking off Kandrona generators on the surface of the planet, Andalite fighters dropped down into the atmosphere to attack our bases and pools. Our own Bug fighters rose up to meet the Andalites in battle even as Andalite ground troops began to attack the Ssstram's settlements, seemingly not caring for the survival of the very species that they were trying to save from us Yeerks.

The Bug fighter that Gershi and I had been piloting had become embroiled in an aerial battle with maybe two or three Andalite fighters (humans would call that a dogfight). I was definitely sure that we were fighting at least two fighters, although that third "Andalite" fighter I only dimly remember might actually be another Bug fighter trying to help us out.

"Take us closer to this _dapsen_ , Gershi!" I shouted. As the Taxxon, Gershi was in charge of flying the Bug fighter with his numerous pincers and claws while I as the Hork-Bajir handled the Bug fighter's weapons, specifically twin Dracon beams on the two spear-like objects mounted to the fighter's sides.

"I'm trying, Yemra, I'm trying!" Gershi screeched through his Taxxon mouth. "This Andalite is flying around erratically since you shot off his tail!" He was talking about how a burst from one of my Dracon beams had destroyed the shredder cannon mounted behind and above the Andalite fighter, much like their own tail blade. There was a rumor going around the Bug fighter squadrons that the Andalites had developed a new type of fighter that was controlled by using their own bodies, including their tail blade shredder. There were also rumors that if a part of the Andalite fighter was to be damaged, the Andalite pilot would at the very least feel some pain on his body as well. Some of the nastier rumors suggested that damaging this new version of the Andalite fighter would also injure the pilot. I've never really believed this particular version of this rumor, but Gershi mentioning the Andalite flying erratically after I had shot off his tail shredder made me think twice about outright rejection the plausibility of this rumor.

"It's hard to get a lock on him!" I said. "He really is all over the place!"

"I'm trying to keep up with him, can't you see?" Gershi shot back. "But as you can see, this Andalite is all over the place!" Gershi then began manipulating the Bug fighter's engine controls using his minor pincers and he also began adding additional trim and stabilizer settings on the control surfaces so that he could control the Bug fighter better under these faster and higher-G maneuvers. The Andalite fighter dodged and twisted and turned, obviously trying to keep itself out of target lock for as long as possible now that it had been rendered defenseless, but eventually the target circle in my display centered itself on the fighter before letting off a low growling tone.

"I have target lock," I called out. I pressed the button to fire, and twin Dracon beams poured out of the spears on the sides of the Bug fighter. Some of the beams struck the body of the Andalite fighter, and the fighter rocked around from the impacts. Nothing really to suggest that the Andalite pilot was feeling the hits as if he was the one being injured, though; more like the hits were really pushing the limits of this particular fighter. And then a pair of Dracon beams struck the Andalite fighter's power source, and the fighter exploded in a bright white and red flash.

I don't remember feeling anything at all when those Dracon beams struck the fighter's power source and made it explode. Of course I knew that it meant that I had just eliminated an enemy of the Empire but I also knew that I had killed an Andalite, a being with his own thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams, maybe even offspring, and I had just ended that life. And yet I felt nothing. No pity, no remorse, no pleasure or justice. I felt nothing at all. And I knew that if the tables had been turned, if it was the Andalite who had shot down Gershi and I, the Andalite pilot wouldn't feel anything at all. We were at war, after all; it was our duty to kill the enemy before they killed us.

"All right, that's one down," Gershi said. "Now let's find that other fighter and then try to find the rest of our squadron."

Suddenly our Bug fighter was rocked by a series of small impacts. "Looks like he found us first," I said to Gershi.

"Hang on to something, Yemra!" Gershi shouted as he lowered the engines' power settings to the lowest possible setting while still keeping us aloft. The nose of the Bug fighter lifted up and I could feel my host body being forced closer to my command console by the forces of gravity and physics. I had a brief glimpse of the second Andalite fighter passing us by through the cockpit windows, and then Gershi applied max power on our engines and began chasing the second fighter. Gershi did a good job of keeping the fighter in my target circle but he still had the majority of his shields up so my Dracon beams weren't doing a lot of damage to him. Meanwhile, our own shields were barely regenerating as it were and there were already places on our fighter where the shields had failed entirely. And that was what was going to cost us in this dogfight.

We were chasing the Andalite fighter across the low hills around Erstrum, one of the larger Ssstram settlements and the site of our Bug fighter wing's base of operations. We flew over battlefields where Ssstram, Mak, Nahara and Hork-Bajir soldiers fought to keep the Andalites at bay even as Dome ships blasted the area with their shredders, destroying Kandrona generators and boiling Yeerk pools and the Yeerks inside to a crisp. I tried to ignore the ground battles below us, to keep my focus and my target circle on this stubborn Andalite fighter, and while I knew I was landing hits on him, none of it mattered while his shields were up.

Suddenly the Andalite fighter seemed to hover in place and we shot past it almost immediately. " _Dapsen!_ " Gershi exclaimed. "He just used my own trick on us! Now we're going to die!"

"Don't say that, Gershi!" I shouted back at him. "I have an idea! Can you fly this thing backward?"

"What? What are you talking about?" Gershi asked, turning three of his twelve eyes on me.

"I said, can you fly this thing backward?" I repeated. "I have an idea. I think I can shoot this _dapsen_ down, but I need to know if you can fly this thing backward. Because if you can't, then this plan isn't going to work at all."

"You're not seriously thinking of doing what I think you're trying to do, are you?"

"Please, Gershi, I just need to know: can you fly this thing backwards or not?"

Gershi didn't reply to me verbally. Instead, he activated the Bug fighter's rear-facing camera, a device that had been placed there to keep an eye on pursuing enemies, but now he was about to use it for a purpose that its inventors hadn't really intended it to be used. Gershi moved the feed from the rear camera into his cockpit view, and then reduced power to one engine while increasing power to the other. The Bug fighter turned to the left, and then Gershi added power to the directional thrusters to complete our about-face, much to the surprise of our Andalite pursuer. Once we were facing the Andalite fighter, Gershi applied full reverse power to our engines and we began moving, flying backwards, just like I had intended. I settled the target circle on the Andalite fighter and I fired. The fighter's shields lit up under the impact of my Dracon beams, and the shields waved and wavered as the Dracons attempted to scramble the photon lattice protecting the physical body of the fighter from the damage that the Dracons could inflict.

"Congratulations, Yemra," Gershi snarled. "You're now shooting at him where his shields are strongest."

"At least he's shooting at us where our shields are strongest as well," I retorted. "Now stop talking to me and concentrate on flying this thing backwards!"

This is the point where you think the story becomes something about Gershi suddenly becoming an ace pilot, masterfully guiding our backwards-flying Bug fighter through the hills and valleys of Erstrum while I pumped this second Andalite fighter's face full of Dracon beams, like what you would see in a human movie. But this is not a human movie; this is my life. And my life almost came to an end because I had talked Gershi into flying our Bug fighter in a way that it wasn't really designed for. Inevitably, our Bug fighter plowed into the peak of a hill that Gershi either didn't see or couldn't dodge in time, and the resulting crash flipped our fighter head over heels, as the humans say. But something also happened to the Andalite fighter as we plowed into that hill that caused it to tumble towards the ground as well (I think it was one of our fighter's spears piercing the belly of the Andalite fighter and damaging his power source). Gershi managed to regain control of our Bug fighter, but while he was able to control our spin and put us back on a relatively stable path, he was unable to stop us from plowing into the ground. "Brace yourselves!" he shouted, and then the last thing I remembered before the crash was of the weapons console rushing towards my head, and then darkness.

I woke up with a stinging pain on my face (or rather my Hork-Bajir's face). I opened my eyes, and I felt a substantial amount of blood caked all over my face. I tried to open my beak mouth to call out for Gershi but then I felt a sharp pain emanating from my beak, and I stopped trying to open it. Was my beak broken? I don't know. I couldn't tell, although the pain coming from it was surely a sign that hitting the weapons console with my face had done some damage to me.

"Gershi?" I finally managed to cry out. Well, I say cry but it was more like a croaking. I could taste blood in my mouth, and somehow I knew that there was dried blood in my throat as well which was responsible for my croaking. "Gershi! Where are you?"

"I'm here, Yemra," Gershi replied, and I turned around and saw that Gershi and his Taxxon had managed to survive the crash relatively unscathed. That was a good thing, because had Gershi's Taxxon suffered any sort of injury, the Taxxon would already be eating itself alive, overriding any of Gershi's attempts to retain or regain control. But no, Gershi and his Taxxon were intact, whereas I couldn't say the same for myself.

"I recommend keeping yourself away from me at the moment, Yemra," Gershi said to me. "Sapinalon can sense the blood from your injuries, and I am already having difficulty in containing his hunger as it is right now. If you come any closer, I may not be able to stop Sapinalon from chasing and eating you."

"That is not good, Gershi," I said. "Computer, deploy emergency exits," I then called out to the ship's computer. Two large rectangular panels popped away from the hull of the Bug fighter, leaving behind two holes large enough for a Taxxon to slither through with room to spare, and I crawled towards the exit nearest to me while Gershi steered his Taxxon to the exit opposite mine, keeping as much distance between his host and mine so I wouldn't be eaten alive. I finally managed to stand up once I had gotten a short distance away from the crumpled wreckage of the Bug fighter, and ahead of me, I could see white or gray smoke emanating from the hills beyond us. Something in my gut told me that that was the crash site of the second Andalite fighter.

I heard Taxxon crawlers scrambling behind me, and I turned around quickly and held out my arm blades in front of me. If Gershi had lost control of his Taxxon then I wanted to be ready to defend myself, even if it could possibly mean the death of Gershi as well. But when I looked at Gershi's Taxxon, he no longer looked like he had the gleam of bloodlust in his twelve compound eyes. "I have managed to force Sapinalon's taste for your flesh buried underneath his other thoughts," Gershi told me. "But I don't know if I can keep it buried for so long. I hope that rescue and help will come for us soon."

Gershi and I waited for what had felt like an eternity of cycles but was actually something about fifteen to thirty Earth minutes before I finally spotted the first signs of movement on the top of the hills surrounding our crash site. At that point, I could see only two thin stalk-like objects peeking at us over the hill, and I immediately thought that the Andalite had somehow managed the crash of his fighter and was now approaching our crash site, possibly hoping to confirm our deaths. "Halt!" I shouted. "Who goes there?"

"Pallem One-Nine-Four of the Ssstram Planetary Defense," came the reply, and the figure on top of the hill revealed itself to be a Ssstram, not an Andalite. The Ssstram were a race of bipedal creatures with triangular heads and short and dumpy bodies not unlike that of E.T. the Extraterrestrial. The Ssstram's two eyes were mounted on the two points of the triangle on the sides, while the downward facing point comprised its neck. A long snout or proboscis-like structure, akin to an elephant's trunk, was where you would expect the nose to be, and the two stalk-like structures on the top of its head that I had first thought to be Andalite stalk eyes were actually the Ssstram's ears. Like Andalite stalk eyes, these Ssstram's ears could turn almost 360 degrees to follow the source of any sounds or noises, an evolutionary holdover from when the Ssstram's distant ancestors were being pursued by predators on the hills of their homeworld.

A squad of Ssstram-Controllers, fifteen Ssstram in total, walked over the hill and approached our crash site. The Ssstram were a very short species; the tallest among them could barely reach its stalk ears up to the waist of my Hork-Bajir host. And, looking back at that memory, only now did I finally understand the humor that I had felt at that time when I saw those Ssstram carrying those Dracon beams in their arms, weapons that were as long as the Ssstram were tall. But there was no humor at all when those Ssstram approached us. "Identify yourself, Hork-Bajir," the commander of the squad, Pallem was his name, told me.

"I am Yemra Six-Four-Zero of the Zek Danet Pool, assigned to the Erstrum Fighter Wing," I replied. "My pilot is Gershi One-Five-Five of the Hym Horreb Pool. He is in a Taxxon but they both somehow survived the crash."

"I am Gershi One-Five-Five," Gershi said to the Ssstram. "We both indeed somehow managed to survive against the odds. Now please take us back to your base so we can rejoin our squadron as soon as possible."

"Very well, then. Follow me. Our base is (translated from the original Galard: _three kilometers_ ) from here. We have a communications post there; you can communicate with your fighter squadron there."

But neither Gershi nor I would be able to follow those Ssstram to their base. Oh, those poor unlucky Ssstram, and the Yeerks in their heads. One minute they were standing there, waiting to take a Hork-Bajir and a Taxxon back to their base, and then without warning an Andalite appeared over the hill and began galloping towards us. I was only about to shout a warning to the Ssstram when the Andalite arrived at the nearest Ssstram. I blinked once, and that Ssstram no longer had his (or her, its, or zhir; I remember that Ssstram have four genders) head. Some of the Ssstram turned around and attempted to shoot at the Andalite with their Dracon beams but this Andalite was just too fast for them. I heard blood spurt and bones crack and crumble as the Andalite warrior made short work of this entire squad of Ssstram. Ssstram bones were also actually surprisingly brittle so an Andalite trying to knock out a Ssstram by hitting them with only the flat of his tail blade could actually kill the Ssstram with the sheer force of their impact as well.

The carnage was over in barely ( _two minutes_ ). The Andalite was scratched and bruised from surviving his own crash (I knew that he had to be the pilot of the fighter chasing us because he was the only Andalite in this area for miles), but it seemed as if he didn't care about his injuries at all. Yellowish-green Ssstram blood dripped from this Andalite's tail blade, while malice, hatred and fury dripped from all four of his eyes. (You,) he boomed in thoughtspeak. (You are the ones who killed War Prince Faluwalo. You will regret having killed the War Prince now, you filthy Yeerks.) He then closed three of his eyes, keeping one open to watch me and Gershi. (Today my ancestors look down upon me from their places in the stars,) he said. (Today they will know that I, Prince Mindorel-Sagaputh-Altep, have avenged the death of my prince, War Prince Faluwalo-Therabek-Waspoth. Today I claim the lives of the killers of my prince.) He then reopened his eyes and raised his tail blade, poised to strike and ready to lop off my host's head at any moment. I closed my eyes and braced myself for my coming death…

…And then the Andalite warrior suddenly fell to his side, his flanks scarred by Dracon beam burns. I blinked in surprise and then I let out the breath that I didn't know I had been holding, and then I finally turned around to look at my savior. It was a Mak-Controller, or rather a squad of four Mak-Controllers, all armed with Dracon beams. The Mak were another species that the Yeerks had only very recently (at the time of the Andalite attack on the Ssstram) subjugated, and there were still elements of Mak society that were still free on their home planet but the Empire was doing its best to conquer and enslave every single Mak on their homeworld. The Mak were five-foot-tall bipedal felinoids (a species that look like Earth felines) with brown fur and dull violet eyes. One of the Mak looked at me and said in Galard, "It appears that we arrived just in time to save you."

"Yes, it looks like indeed you are," I replied.

I would later find out that my savior's name was Moxach Five-Nine-Four of the Ras Zamant Pool. If that name sounds familiar to you then that's because Jen mentioned him (and his current host, George Islington) in her first book. At least one other Yeerk managed to make it out of that battle into a (somewhat) safer place here on Earth, thankfully, but truth be told neither Moxach nor I have talked a lot of what had happened on the Ssstram homeworld once we had become stuck here on Earth. Mostly it was because we haven't had the opportunity to sit down and talk about it but if we did have the time, I have a feeling neither of us would know how to begin. It's not really your usual topic of conversation with anyone else, is it?

* * *

A/N: Sorry if this chapter went on for quite a while. This was a story that I really had to write down like this because I feel that this is the best way to present this chapter to readers. Having said that though, do leave a review if you liked this chapter or even if you didn't. And if you would like to keep up to date with this particular story then leave a follow or a favorite. If you're interested in more works in my style, either follow or favorite me as an author (or maybe even both). I may not update a lot or even on a set schedule but I am an active writer on this site. Cheers! - GR


	5. Can You Keep a Secret?

Every being in the universe has secrets. I am no exception to that. I have harbored secrets of my own ever since that fateful battle for the Ssstram homeworld, a secret borne by a revelation that I came across in the moment that I thought I was about to die by the tail blade of an Andalite warrior. It was quite disturbing now that I think back to it, and I was also quite disturbed by this thought when I first realized it.

In the moment when I thought that Andalite tail blade was going to lop off my Hork-Bajir host's head from her body, my host didn't say anything about how I deserved the fate I thought I was about to get. She didn't pray for a good afterlife. She didn't even beg for mercy, even if it was just in the recesses of her own mind. In fact, she said, and did, nothing at all. That in itself was disturbing enough. But when I delved deeper into the memories of my host, something that we Yeerks had been taught not to do unless it was unavoidable (like when we were infesting a new host for the first time), what I learned made my first realization all the more chilling. This Hork-Bajir had been through a series of Yeerks, each of them seemingly more abusive than the last. This Hork-Bajir had fought against her first Yeerk, and that Yeerk had fought back by performing the Empire-mandated "mental restructuring"; in other words, mental abuse and torture. This Hork-Bajir's reputation then began to precede her, and subsequent Yeerks assigned to her performed the "mental restructuring" once they infested her until she was finally broken. By the time I had been assigned to this Hork-Bajir, her brain and mind was beyond any reason and feeling. She no longer cared about what happened to her body; the other Yeerks had treated her as a puppet and eventually even she came to see herself as just that, a puppet for an alien brain slug to control and manipulate.

It was quite the chilling revelation for me, and it was the reason why I came to join the Yeerk Peace Movement and fight for the rights of Yeerks and hosts to be able to coexist with each other and become partners. But of course that didn't happen overnight, and I didn't learn about the Peace Movement immediately after I made my realization. Hence why I am talking about secrets right now. I had to keep my realization a secret because if my superiors got so much as a hint of what I had been thinking, I would be accused of "host sympathy" and sentenced to Kandrona starvation. And not just the one that happens after three Earth days; no, we Yeerks have mastered techniques to keep our criminals and "host sympathizers" just on the edge of survival and death by starvation until either they realize the error of their ways, repent and promise to never do it again; or refuse to give up their beliefs and die of starvation.

Feeding in the Yeerk Pool now became a somewhat terrifying proposition for me. I was sure that my brother and sister Yeerks could feel that I was beginning to develop a sympathy, not only for my host, but also for all of the host species under the thumb of the Empire. I was sure that I was somehow broadcasting all of my thoughts out for my fellow Yeerks to know, and that word of my nascent host sympathy would eventually reach a sub-visser and then I would be sent to one of the Empire's asteroid penal colonies (I believe that that's the closest human analogue to what I am describing) to serve out my starvation sentence. But as the days went on and no guards came to haul me out of the Pool, I began to realize that perhaps my fears were unfounded; that none of my fellow Yeerks could actually sense that I now had sympathies for my host in particular and our host species in general. Once I had realized this, I was able to restore a sense of normalcy to my daily routine. I was not in danger of getting picked up and arrested out of nowhere, and for that I was able to breathe a (metaphorical, of course) sigh of relief.

But now I had another problem: who am I going to tell about my new viewpoint of life? I have friends in the various Pools to which I had been assigned throughout my lifetime, of course, but who among them could I trust with my new secret and not to report me to the authorities? The Empire had made it very clear that sympathizing with our host species was a capital crime and that anyone who so much as said or thought something that could very well be construed as having host sympathy should be reported to your commanding sub-visser immediately so that the "sympathetic" Yeerk could be "reeducated" accordingly. You know exactly why there are air quotes around the word "reeducation".

Having said that, some time after the Dome ship attack on the Ssstram homeworld, I was feeding in the Pool some distance away from the rest of the majority of the other Yeerks when I sensed Gershi One-Five-Five approach me. After we had made the customary exchange of greetings by twirling our stalks together, Gershi asked me, (I couldn't help but notice that you were away from the rest of our brothers and sisters. Is there anything on your mind?)

(I was just thinking about what happened with that Andalite fighter during the attack of the Dome ship,) I replied.

(Ah, yes. We barely survived that one, didn't we? I really thought that that was going to be the end of both of us. If it weren't for that squad of Mak saving us, we wouldn't be here talking about this right now.)

(Yes, that is true,) I replied. (Gershi, can I tell you something?)

(Yes, of course, Yemra. You can tell me anything,) Gershi replied.

(You must understand, Gershi, that I trust you,) I told him. (But what I'm about to tell you… it's not exactly something that I can just tell to anyone, do you know what I mean?)

(I'm not sure that I do,) Gershi admitted. (But why are you saying that you're not sure that you trust me immediately after you told me that you _do_ trust me?)

(Gershi, you must promise me that you will never tell this to anyone else,) I asked him. (No one else can know. You must promise me!)

(There is no need to shout, Yemra. That kind of defeats the purpose of keeping this a secret, don't you think?)

I thought about it, and what Gershi said made sense. (Yes, Gershi, you're right,) I conceded. (Now listen closely because I don't want to say this more than once. Let us go back to the start of this conversation. Do you remember the fight against that Andalite fighter, the one where we both crashed and we both thought that we were about to die?)

(Yes, I do remember that,) Gershi replied. (How does that relate to what you want to tell me that I cannot tell to anyone else?)

(Well, when that Andalite was about to kill me, my host felt nothing at all,) I replied hesitantly.

I could feel the tension, shock, and even fear that was suddenly emanating from Gershi. (Your host felt nothing?) he asked me in the equivalent of a whisper. (What do you mean by that?)

(I mean that my host didn't think of anything at all while that Andalite was preparing his tail blade,) I replied. Now that I had mustered the courage to tell someone else my secret, everything was coming out of me in droves. (My host didn't feel any satisfaction or relief or gratitude. She didn't beg for mercy from the Andalite or laugh at me because we were both about to die. No, my host didn't think anything at all. She didn't even feel anything at all. And I think it's because my host has been through so much mental restructuring from her previous Yeerks.)

(Did I hear you correctly, Yemra?) Gershi asked me carefully. (Are you telling me that you believe that your host has been rendered mentally mute due to previous mental restructuring from her former Yeerks?)

(I do not wish to make such an accusation,) I said back immediately. (But I happened to look into my host's memories because I wanted to know why she was like that—)

(You looked into your host's memories as well?) Gershi asked in complete shock. (Are you beginning to develop sympathies for your host, Yemra?)

(What? No! I did not say that I was sympathizing with my host, Gershi,) I replied. (All I said was that I had looked through my host's memories to learn why she had become emotionless during that moment where I thought that we were both about to die. I am not sympathizing with her! I only wanted to know what had happened to her.)

(Of course, Yemra, I understand,) Gershi replied in a calmer voice than he had used for the past few moments. (But you do realize that, host sympathy or not, looking through your host's memories beyond the first few moments of infestation is still frowned upon and could get you demoted back to a Gedd, right?)

(Yes, yes, I know, but I was just so curious about what had happened to my host to turn her into what she is now,) I said. (And you know what, Gershi? Mental restructuring must go!) Now I was on a roll, and it was fair to say that I wasn't thinking about what I was saying, or the consequences that could come with the wrong ears hearing my words. (It does nothing to help our relationships with our host species,) I continued, (and all it does is damage our hosts! We need our hosts to be as healthy as possible so that they will respond immediately to our commands when we need them to!) And then I realized what I was about to say next, and I finally managed to shut myself up.

For his part, Gershi was inscrutable. I could not sense any emotions or feelings from him. He was unreadable. I knew that I had just "messed up big time," as you humans are fond of calling it, by blabbing about my newfound thoughts and realizations to Gershi. Yes, Gershi was my friend, but when it comes to the possibility of being accused of host sympathy, nobody can really be your friend, especially if you're a Yeerk in the Yeerk Empire. There is nobody in the Empire whom you would trust with your deepest and darkest secrets, especially if those secrets entail the possibility of being considered as sympathizing with your host, not even a friend. And I do not exaggerate when I say that there have indeed been cases of Yeerks being sentenced to slow starvation just because they said something to a Yeerk whom they thought to be their friend. Because the truth was there was no such thing as a friend in the Yeerk Empire. It was all about surviving and getting ahead of others.

And I could not know how Gershi was going to react to what he had just heard from me. Was he going to report me immediately? Or was he going to keep quiet, bide his time until he was back in his Taxxon host, and then that was the moment that he was going to report me to the nearest sub-visser? I just didn't know.

* * *

In the first few years of my infestation of Jen Carson, I had made her keep my existence a secret from everyone else. I had to make her do it. I had crawled into Jen's ear just a few days after the Yeerk Pool underneath her city had been attacked and captured by US Army and Marine units in a set of coordinated attacks which culminated with the venting of the Pool ship in orbit above the Earth. Anyone else finding out about my existence would have been very dangerous both for me and for Jen because Jen could very well be attacked for keeping me in her head, and I could very well be forced out of Jen's head and stomped or crushed to death by a group of Yeerk hunters. And that wasn't even getting to the fact that I was somehow able to survive more than three Earth days without the vital Kandrona rays that were so important to Yeerk-kind…

But, as I had learned from my own experiences, keeping a secret was easier said than done. It had been just a few months since the day that I had infested Jen in the river, and it was now the first day of school for her. Jen was deathly nervous about the fact that she now had an alien slug living in her head and that she was about to take said alien slug to school with her. And as much as I had tried to convince her over the week before the start of classes that no one would be able to tell that there was a Yeerk wrapped around her brain, Jen was still convinced that the rest of her classmates would know about my being in her head almost immediately.

 _For the last time, Jen, no one will know that I am in your head_ , I told Jen as she dressed herself in front of her mirror. _That was why we Yeerks were able to keep our presence here on your planet a secret for as long as we did._

"Yeah, you keep telling me that," Jen said to me physically. She was still slightly uneasy about trying to talk to me mentally so she was still speaking to me using her own mouth even though I could already read her thoughts as soon as she formed them. "But someone still found out that the Yeerks were here, right? And that's why you're now hiding in my head, right?"

 _Yes, all that you have said to me is true_ , I conceded. _But what is also true is that none of your classmates, and even none of your teachers, will see me in your head. Unless you are some kind of human where other people can see through your skin and your skull._

"Okay, um, I'm not that weird, you know," Jen replied. "Now people are going to think I'm weird because I got an alien in my head. Now I'm weird because of you. And everyone is gonna know it!"

 _Do you want me to take control of you, at least for today, so that you don't have to worry about your classmates noticing that I am now in your head?_ I asked.

"No! I thought we were clear on that! My body, my brain, my rules!" Jen replied angrily.

 _All right, Jen. There is no need to shout. There is no need to be upset. You don't want to explain to your mother or your father why you're talking as loudly to yourself like what you're doing now, would you?_

"No, I guess not," Jen admitted meekly. She then finished buttoning up her sweater, and she smoothed out her miniskirt and rolled up her sleeves to her wrists, and then Jen stood in front of the mirror. "So, how do I look?" she asked me.

 _You look like a regular American schoolgirl, Jen_ , I replied. _You look completely normal._

"Really? I'm not too sure about that," Jen replied.

 _All right, Jen, take a good, long, and hard look at yourself_ , I said. _Since it appears that you don't believe in me, maybe you will finally believe when you see it for yourself. Now, ignore for the moment the fact that I am indeed in your head. Now look at yourself. Can you tell that you have a Yeerk in your head?_

I could hear Jen's thoughts churning around in her brain as she tried to decide whether I had a point or not. Those thoughts included, ((Dang, I think she has a point)), ((But I still think people will see I've got a Yeerk in my head)), and ((I really, really love this miniskirt)). One of those thoughts is not like the others, but other than that, Jen finally saw my side of the argument. "All right, fine, I can't see you in me," she said, "but if someone else notices you, I'm not blaming me!"

"Jen, are you ready yet?" Jen's mother Eve asked from the other side of the door. "You might be late for school! And it's only the first day! You don't want to be known as the girl who's always late for the first day of school now, do you?"

"Just wait a minute, Mom! Just one more thing and then I'm done!" Jen walked away from her mirror, grabbed a pair of well-worn boots, put them on, and then she picked up her backpack and walked out of her room, straight into her mother. "I'm ready, Mom!" she said with a smile. We got in the car, and Jen's mom drove to Jen's school to drop her off. Just as Jen had stepped out of the car, Eve called out to her and said, "Remember what we talked about, Jen. The one before you slipped in the river."

"Yes, Mom, I will," Jen replied, and then Eve rolled up the window and drove off, leaving Jen in front of the school. Jen turned around and saw all the other students milling around in the school and the smile immediately vanished from her face. "Oh, my God, there's a lot of people here," she said.

 _Don't worry about it!_ I told her. _Just keep calm. Nobody knows I'm in your head. No one will even notice unless you begin acting strange. Just do what you always do every first day of school. Unless you want me to do it for you…_

"No!" Jen shouted. Then, after making a big mental effort of it, she continued our conversation mentally. ((Remember what _we_ talked about. My body, my rules! I say you can't control my body, you can't control my body! End of story.))

 _Then_ you _need to calm down and just do what you normally do on the first day of school and we will both get through this day just fine. Nobody's going to be looking for a Yeerk in your school, especially not one whom everyone else thinks is dead. Unless you or your family have a connection to The Sharing that you're somehow keeping secret from me…_

((No, I don't think so,)) Jen replied, physically shaking her head for good measure. ((Mom and Dad don't really like the community helping stuff that The Sharing does.))

 _All right. Now I believe it's time for you to go to class, Jen. As your mother said, you don't want to be late on the first day of school, do you?_

"All right, I'm going," Jen said out loud, and then she began walking over to her classroom. I could still hear Jen's thoughts swirling around her mind, thinking that the other students could tell that she was walking around with an extra passenger in her head, but at least she wasn't directing her thoughts at me. I also chose to keep quiet because an argument between the two of us right here in the middle of the hallway would be the very thing that would get the both of us noticed for all the wrong reasons. Jen finally entered her classroom and immediately headed for her seat, where her best friend Julia "Jules" Baker was waiting for her. "Hey, girlfriend," Jules called out as she waved Jen over.

"Hey yourself, girl," Jen said back as she laid down her backpack underneath her table.

"So did you really crack your head in the river?" Jules asked.

Jen sighed and clasped her head in her hands. "Oh, yeah, that," she said. "Yeah, I did. I was skipping rocks on the river and I was trying to get some more rocks and then I slipped."

"Oh," Jules muttered. "That must have been nasty. I only heard about it a few days ago from Carina and Haley after the family got back from Cancun. Carina told me that you had a concussion and lost a lot of blood. I mean, thank God I didn't have to see that but did you really get a concussion?"

"No, I didn't get a concussion," Jen replied. "I did have to lie down for like three days though. And I didn't lose a lot of blood but I was definitely bleeding. The doctor said my head hit the rock in a way that split the skin which was why I was bleeding a lot. You should have seen it, Jules. Mom was freaking out and crying while Dad was shouting for someone to call 911. I couldn't move my body too. I thought I was gonna die."

"Yeah, no thanks. I'm already getting the creeps just thinking about it," Jules said.

"The docs had to sew me up too," Jen continued. "You wanna see my scar?" Before Jules had even replied though, Jen had already pulled her hair back to reveal the small scar just at the base of her skull. "At least my hair hides it so no one can really tell it's there," she continued.

"Oh, wow," Jules said as she saw the scar for the first time. "Yeah, that really is ugly." Both Jen and I then felt more than saw Jules touch the thickened skin of the scar, which felt strange for the both of us, and Jen and I also thought that it must have felt strange to Jules as well. "But you're right. The hair hides it. Just don't do buns."

"Why, thank you, Julia. I haven't thought of that before," Jen said, sarcastically according to her. "I'll keep that in mind."

"But enough about you, Jen. What about those aliens though?" Jules asked. "What do they call them again? Eeks? Creeps? Years?"

"Yeerks," Jen replied automatically.

"Yeah, whatever," Jules waved off. "Those things have been living under our cities for how many years now, crawling their way into our brains, and they only got stopped now? And you can't even tell who's got aliens in their heads! Can you believe who had aliens in their heads? Remember Mr. Bosworth, the gym teacher? His wife had one! Remember Johnny Olsson in 3-B? His parents had aliens in their heads too! So did his sister and brother. It's like Johnny's the only one in the family who didn't have an alien in his head. And remember George Steele's cousin? The hot one? He had an alien in his head as well!"

((Oh, crap,)) Jen said to me. ((This is it. I can feel it. Jules is gonna sense I've got an alien in my head too, and she's gonna report me!))

 _Don't even think about it!_ I told her. _Just calm down and keep talking to Jules. She can't tell I'm in here, I promise you._

"Mike Steele?" Jen asked. "He had a Yeerk in his head too?"

"What? No! Not Mike! The other one!" Jules said indignantly. "The blonde one! With the dreamy gray eyes… What's his name again? Larry! Larry Tucker! He's the one with the alien! Mike's the one with the llama face. Oh, my God, Jen," Jules muttered, covering her mouth with her hand. "You think Mike the Llama is hot?"

"Of course not!" Jen replied equally indignantly. "I forgot about Larry Tucker, okay? I mean, sure, he's hot, but I'm not the one with a crush on the guy! That's you and you alone, Jules!"

"Okay, forget about my crushes for a second," Jules said. Then in a whisper she said, "I even heard that both Susan and Harvey had aliens in their heads as well. We spend eight hours a day with them, Jen. Who knows what they could've done to us then? I'm telling you, Jen, these aliens are real scary. Just imagine it: you can't tell if the guy or girl next to you's got an alien in their head or not!"

((She knows,)) Jen told me. ((Jules knows! We're both dead!))

 _Hush! Calm down!_ I retorted. Then without telling Jen what I was going to do, I took control of her brain's glands and made them release the necessary chemicals and compounds to calm her down and slow down her heartbeat.

"At least I know you don't have an alien in your head, Jen," Jules said. "Your parents aren't real fond of The Sharing, right? And everyone I know who had aliens in their heads were all in The Sharing. So I know you're clean, Jen. And that's nice."

Jen smiled back at Jules, although it was very much a nervous smile that could have very well tipped off Jules that something might not be right with her best friend. "That's real nice of you too, Jules," Jen said, and then both she and Jules faced forward as their first teacher of the day arrived in the classroom.

Of course, Jen and Jules went back to this conversation once the legal status of Controllers was finally clarified (meaning it was decided that Controllers had the same rights as everyone else and were not lower than dirt because they had collaborated with the aliens that had tried to take over the Earth) and, as Jen had expected, Jules was completely shocked to find out that Jen actually had a Yeerk in her head at the very same time that she had said that she knew that Jen couldn't possibly have had a Yeerk in her at the time. "That's really, really unbelievable," Jules said once she had gotten over the shock. "But I was right! I couldn't tell you had a Yeerk back then, and even now that I know you've got one, I still can't tell! This is really, really creepy, dude."

"You'll get used to it, Jules," Jen replied. "Heck, even I took a year or two to get used to Yemra. So it's all right. It's gonna happen eventually." And she did, and so did Jen's other friends. So, as they say, everything went well in the end after all.


	6. Make Your Choice

I still remember the next few weeks and months (I guess that would be the appropriate human approximation for the time units that had passed) after my fateful conversation with Gershi One-Five-Five. I still remember the nervousness and fear that I experienced every time a guard or a sub-visser would approach me, whether I was on duty or not. My mind was running away from me; I kept thinking that Gershi had reported me to our superiors and that it was only a matter of time before I was hauled away to an asteroid prison pool for having host sympathies. I was wincing and jumping just about every time that another Yeerk would approach me, and even though all that they would tell me was to perform some sort of duty or other, my own feelings and emotions would keep my host's heart racing until well after the Yeerk who had approached me had left.

I was pretty much still in a paranoid state of mind when the thing that I had feared the most finally happened to me. I was feeding in the Pool, soaking up Kandrona rays when the ultrasonic announcement came in: ((Yemra Six-Four-Zero, report to the transport pier immediately.))

There were three piers in any given Yeerk Pool. The infestation and feeding piers, I believe you already know. But it's the third pier, the transport pier, which has been all but neglected in terms of being mentioned by the _Animorphs_ books, mostly because it serves no purpose in the storytelling of those books whatsoever. But the transport pier is actually a very important piece of infrastructure in terms of the movement of Yeerks. Simply put, the transport pier is exactly what it is: it is the pier to where Yeerks who are to be transported to another place (usually reassignment to another Pool but sometimes also used as a way to quietly detain a suspected host sympathizer without attracting too much attention from the rest of the Pool) swim and await transport. When I heard that announcement calling me over to the transport pier, I literally froze. If I had a body, my blood would have run cold and my heart would have skipped beat or two.

Reluctantly, I made my way to the transport pier. If I could have run away or even just remained in the Pool without being detected, I would have done it. But there was no way that I would not be detected, not after my name had already been called to proceed to the transport pier. A tube-like container was already waiting for me underneath the transport pier, and I had no choice but to swim into the container and await my fate.

The container sealed itself behind me, and I could feel the tube being lifted up and carried to wherever I was destined to go. These tubes had a small Kandrona generator at the other end of the tube with only enough power to generate these vital Kandrona rays for a short amount of time, usually just enough time to carry the Yeerk inside from one Pool to another, usually on the same planet or in a Pool ship docked on the same planet as the origin Pool. I was in this transport tube for perhaps about five minutes (the approximate amount of time in human terms), and then I felt the tube being lowered once again. The tube opened, and my body immediately sensed that the liquid outside had a higher concentration of Kandrona rays than inside the tube, and I shot out towards the higher concentration of rays.

As I soaked up the Kandrona rays, I sent out sonar pings at my surroundings. It appeared that I was in some sort of small Pool, smaller than the communal Yeerk Pools but larger than the Pools used to transport Yeerks with host sympathies and other such crimes and transgressions to the Yeerk Empire onboard Pool ships. It also appeared that I was the only Yeerk in this particular Pool, with no other Yeerks swimming around with me. Curiosity eventually got the better of me and replaced my initial apprehension and fear. This wasn't usually how the Empire dealt with host sympathizers. No, that involved taking the offending Yeerk away from any Kandrona source almost immediately and being placed in starvation and deprivation tanks where they were forced to go through the maximum three Earth days without Kandrona rays and sometimes even further, with the jailers giving only enough Kandrona ray doses to keep the Yeerk barely alive. After weeks or even months of repeating this process, during which the Yeerk would be interrogated to determine the "severity" of their sympathy with their host (yes, severity is the most appropriate word for this, and it just goes to show how criminalized the act of host sympathy was within the Empire, at least before we had discovered _Homo sapiens_ ), this information would then be used to determine the appropriate punishment for the offender. The lightest sentences involved keeping the offending Yeerk in a small Pool barely big enough to swim around in inside a penal colony, never to infest another being again and experience sight, smell, taste and all the other senses. More often than not though, the punishment for host sympathy was death by Kandrona starvation. And the Empire had developed ways to make the sentenced Yeerk starve for much longer than the standard three days. Some Yeerks who were found to have sympathized so much with their hosts were practically given a life sentence, meaning that they would have to live the rest of their days constantly on the edge of starvation.

So you can imagine my apprehension when I had been brought to this small Pool with only myself for company. Was this supposed to be some new punishment for a host-sympathetic Yeerk? Am I to become a test subject for whatever new experimental procedure that the Empire's scientists have cooked up yet again to prolong an accused Yeerk's suffering?

My questions were answered when two more transport tubes were lowered into the Pool. I sensed two Yeerks come out and begin swimming around, soaking up the Kandrona rays like I was. One of these Yeerks swam towards me, although once he was close enough he turned apprehensive and didn't seem too keen to approach me. Perhaps he was thinking the same thoughts that I was, that we were about to become part of some strange experiment. Eventually he lowered his guard and we twisted our palps together, the standard Yeerk greeting while in our real bodies. ((Hello there)), he said to me. ((Did they take you from the transport pier as well?))

((Yes, as a matter of fact, I did come from there,)) I replied. ((Yemra Six-Four-Zero of the Zek Danet Pool. And you are?))

((Karel Five-Two-Seven of the Bil Zaped Pool. Do you know why we were taken to this… Pool? This is a pool, isn't it? I assume we must be here for some purpose.))

((I am sure someone will come along and explain everything to us,)) I replied. ((And I think that we should be safe here, unless a Vanarx comes along and sweeps us up in its maw. But surely there wouldn't be any Vanarxim on this planet, would there?))

((I can only hope that you are correct,)) Karel said with a nervous sonar click. (In human terms, that would be the equivalent of someone laughing to ease some of their internal tension.)

The other Yeerk who entered the Pool via the transport tube at the same time as Karel finally swam over to us, and the three of us twirled our palps together in a tripartite greeting. ((I see that you two have finally met,)) he said. ((I can only hope that the two of you haven't told each other your full names and designations just yet.))

((Why?)) Karel asked nervously. If he was human then he would probably be sweating and rubbing his hands together in anxiety. ((Is that important?))

((Yes, I would say that it is extremely important,)) the Yeerk replied.

((But why is it important?)) I asked. ((And what will happen to us if I told you that we had already introduced ourselves to each other?))

If the Yeerk had a head then he would probably been shaking it at this point in our conversation. ((Oh, that is unfortunate news indeed,)) he said. ((And it probably shouldn't matter anyway, but I have been told by a very reliable authority that it does. I just hope that it won't end up backfiring spectacularly on either of you or both of you.))

((Who are you? Can I ask you who you are?))

((Yes, you can. The cat is already out of the bag between the two of you; I might as well throw my hat in and introduce myself to the two of you as well.)) _**(Jen: Of course, he didn't actually say these word for word, but Yemra did tell me that these were the closest analogues to the idioms that he had used in that fateful meeting.)**_

((So who _are_ you, sir?)) I asked, both curious and afraid of the answer he was about to give me.

The Yeerk lifted his palps up to almost 45 degrees, the equivalent of a human puffing his chest out proudly. ((I am Yibey Nine-One-Five of the Culat Hest Pool,)) he said, (( _Vex'not_ of Sub-visser Nine-hundred-Seventy-two.))

* * *

Jennifer Carson had always felt an attraction, a calling even, to the University of Notre Dame. No explanation, she says, even until now. She just said that she liked it, and that she wanted to go there for college. I was the first one to know about it, mostly because I was right there inside Jen's head when she made the realization. I was also the first one to whom she talked about it, with her primary concern being if her parents could afford it. I told her not to worry about it at the moment, to focus on graduating from high school first because she wasn't going to go to Notre Dame (or anywhere else for that matter) if she didn't make it through high school first. And, thank the Kandrona and thank God, Jen did graduate on time, mostly due to her own hard work and effort but sometimes with me nudging her to do her projects when she would have procrastinated otherwise or even outright taking control when Jen wasn't in the mood to do anything at all.

I have to say though that Jen's friends were actually surprised when she finally told them that Notre Dame was her dream university during one of those conversations where they were all now planning for the future (at the very least, their collegiate future). Their concern very much centered on the possible monetary limitations, whether Jen's parents could afford to send her there or not. Jen told them the same thing that I had told her when we first talked about it: that she was not going to worry too much about it, and that she was going to do the best that she could so that she could become one of the two thousand or so accepted every year by Notre Dame. And, wouldn't you know it, Jen did get accepted into Notre Dame, not only because she had passed all of the requirements but also because of her high school soccer career, most notably that state championship game where they won 4-3 after being three goals down in the first half.

And now we get to the point of this particular story. Needless to say, Jen was very excited when she went to train with the Fighting Irish women's soccer team for the very first time. Allison Torres, another one of Jen's friends and soccer teammates who was also admitted to Notre Dame, was with her when they went to the training ground. They introduced themselves to their new teammates and they talked, and some questions inevitably led to me, aka Yeerks, because Jen had mentioned being a Controller in her application and it got around to the Fighting Irish team as it inevitably always does. Her new teammates asked the usual questions: how does it feel like, who's in control right now, who gets to be in control most of the time, that kind of stuff. Overall I got the impression that they were okay with me being in the head of one of their new teammates and that they didn't really mind me being there at all. Heck, it was even easy for me to sit back and listen to their conversations.

And then came the moment that would define Jen's college soccer career.

"Jennifer Carson?" a loud and deep voice called out. "Is Jennifer Carson here?"

"Right here," Jen called out, raising her hand and turning to face the caller. When she had first heard the voice, she had imagined its owner as looking something like Arnold Schwarzenegger because of the deepness of the voice and the German accent, but when she saw the owner of the voice, she was surprised to find out that it was actually a black man.

"Okay," the man said, nodding his head. "And Allison Torres? Is she here?"

"I'm here," Allison (or Sonny as her nickname was) replied.

"I'm Coach Karl," the man said. "Karl Holzbacher. Welcome to the Fighting Irish," he said as the three of us shook hands. "Now I don't want to interrupt your bonding session with the rest of the team, girls, but there are some things that I'm afraid we have to talk about right now. Walk with me, please?"

Jen and Sonny followed Coach Karl into the facility beside the training ground. We passed by the locker room, the changing room, and the shower room before we went into a small office marked only by a single plaque: COACH. "Come in, please, and sit down," Coach said, and Jen and Sonny sat down on the two chairs in front of the desk where there was another plaque which gave out Coach's name and his position in the team. There were relatively few decorations in the office, and the one that caught Jen's attention was a picture of Coach Karl wearing a purple soccer uniform and sitting on his haunches alongside other people who were also sitting down and wearing purple uniforms.

"Ach, yes, me in my playing days," Coach said when he noticed where Jen was looking at. "I like to think that I was a good player. I did well with Tennis Borussia Berlin, if you two were wondering what my team was. I could have played for the United States, you know, because of my father. He was serving in the Fulda Gap when he met my mother, and then I came along, and then my father was reassigned to Vietnam where he was shot down by the Viet Cong…" Coach then made the sign of the cross silently before he continued. "But enough about me. Ms. Carson, let's talk about you now. I understand that you are a… how do you call it again? A Controller?"

Jen took a deep breath and sighed. ((Here we go again, Yems,)) she said to me, and then out loud, she said, "Yes, Coach, I am." If she was to be honest, Jen was already dead tired of having to tell people that yes, she had an alien body-snatching slug in her head, and having to explain why she chose to live that way. But she also knew that it was part and parcel of me living in her and that she would have to keep doing it so long as we both lived, and Jen just didn't feel like not doing it.

"So you have one of those, um, aliens in your head right now?" Coach asked.

Jen instinctively scratched her left temple. "Yeah, I have," she replied. "Would you like to see her?"

Coach Karl shook his head. "That's not important right now," he said. "But what is important is that you have in your head, what is for all intents and purposes, another sentient being."

"Oh, so it's going to be _that_ issue," Jen said loudly before she realized that she was speaking physically and not mentally, and I felt her heart immediately start beating faster.

"Ah, so you do understand the problem that I have, that we as a team have, because of the alien in your head right now," Coach said.

Ah, yes, the eternal question: if you have a Controller sportsperson playing soccer, football, basketball, or any other sport, then does that count for just one player or two players on the field or the court? Many arguments have been made for both sides. People who argued against letting Controllers participate in their sports with their Yeerks in their heads claimed that the Yeerks would give the sportspeople an unfair advantage by basically acting as a coach from whom the player or athlete could get advice on what to do or updates about what was happening; that the Yeerks would enhance their hosts' reflexes and reactions; and that a Yeerk, being a sapient being (one who recognizes that they are and are able to reason with another), technically counts as an extra player. People who argue for letting Controller athletes keep their Yeerks in their heads during the game or the event (who more often than not are the very athletes with Yeerks in their heads) claim that the other side's arguments are poppycock, to put it mildly. First of all, they say, Yeerks are not performance-enhancing drugs, and they are most certainly not like some science fiction parasites that give their host super strength or super speed or super agility or some other superpower at the expense of something like the host's life or sanity. Secondly, since the Yeerk can only live inside their host, they cannot possibly be counted as an extra player, and thirdly, these athletes are so well-trained that their Yeerks don't need to coach them during the game.

Personally, I agree with the side arguing for letting Controllers play with their Yeerks. I should know what they're talking about because, in case you couldn't tell, I'm a Yeerk. Aside from the fact that we Yeerks do indeed not enhance their host body in any capacity whatsoever, I have personally never had to coach Jen during a game. She's such a natural at soccer that it's almost instinctive for her. And I enjoy the experience and all of the feelings of playing soccer as well. Well, maybe except for the tackles and the falling onto the grass. Those parts of playing soccer, I can live without. And I will also admit to warning Jen if I could see someone rushing her out of the corner of her eye. I don't know what other athletes' Yeerks do during games, though.

"Excuse me, Coach, can I say something about this?" Sonny said. When Coach Karl nodded his head, Sonny continued, "I'm sorry, but I just don't see what the problem is right here. Nobody said anything about Yemra back when we were playing in high school."

Jen laid a hand on Sonny's arm. "Sonny, calm down," she said. "Just take it easy, all right? Remember the thing about Yeerks." One of the unspoken conventions in our post-war, voluntary Yeerk infestation era was that Controllers and their family and friends never talked about the Controller's Yeerk in casual conversation with other people who may or may not know about the Controller. This was from the days when people were still angry at Yeerks and were looking for retribution in whatever way they can. Today, such a thing wasn't really possible without severe consequences from the law, but there was still the fear of being stalked and/or the person who wasn't supposed to hear about the person's Yeerk letting it slip that said person was hosting a Yeerk. This was especially damaging for those people who had applied to host a Yeerk and wanted to keep it a secret as much as possible (yes, there are still people who wanted to keep their infestations a secret, even if it is completely voluntary). And even though Karl Holzbacher didn't feel like the kind of person who would take advantage of Jen's status as a Controller, this particular convention was just something that Controllers did.

"Stay calm? Take it easy?" Sonny repeated. "No, I'm not going to stay calm and take it easy! We never had this problem when we played in high school! Not even after Jen got her Yeerk! Nobody cared when Jen played against them! Nobody said anything about our team fielding twelve players at once!"

To his credit, Coach Karl waited until Sonny had finished with her tirade before he replied to her statements. "I hear you, Ms. Torres," he said. "And I understand what you're trying to say. But you also have to understand it from my point of view. I believe it makes sense that you can get away with fielding a player with a Yeerk in high school. Hang on a minute now, I'm not finished!" he said with a raised finger when Sonny made to retort. "That was high school. This is college. There will be scouts watching each and every one of you for every game that you play with us. And these scouts will come not just from the clubs around the country but also from the USSF, the United States Soccer Federation. And if these scouts take notice of you, you might be selected for the women's national soccer team. And that is liable to open up an entirely new can of worms because then, FIFA is going to get involved, and when FIFA gets involved, so too does money, no matter what decision FIFA will take in the end. You must understand that this is a very unique conundrum that, right now, is applicable only to the United States. We are the only country in the world so far to have Yeerks living within our borders and letting them live inside our own citizens as well. So this is a very sensitive area for everyone involved, and everyone would like to keep it in the back burner until a solution, any sort of solution, is reached."

Sonny Torres scoffed. "I'm sorry, Coach," she said, "but there's simply no way that Jen is gonna do what you want her to do. Right, Jen? Right?"

To be fair to Jen, she was prepared to take my side and fight for my right to be in her during soccer. But then Coach Karl mentioned the possibility that Jen could get called up to the US women's soccer team, and just like that, her mind was gone, off to Imagination Land where Jen saw herself standing alongside the likes of Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd, and Hope Solo representing the United States and scoring the goal that won the US the Women's World Cup. At least the girl had dreams, right?

 _Jen!_ I called out, and that finally snapped her out of her daydream. Jen shook her head, turned to Sonny, and asked her, "You were saying?"

"Jen, you're not seriously thinking about giving up Yemra just so you can play soccer, right?" Sonny asked back.

"Well, I mean… I'm not literally giving Yemra up," Jen replied slowly. "I just have to put her away in some water when I'm playing, and then once the game's done, I just pop her right back into my head, right?" she asked Coach Karl.

"That's the general idea, yes," Coach replied noncommittally. "But in the interests of full disclosure, you have to let your Yeerk out during training sessions as well. We are trying to cover all bases, after all."

I guess I should have known that this was the choice that Jen would make. Soccer was, after all, her first and foremost interest. It was what she wanted to do, and I wouldn't, couldn't possibly begrudge Jen something that she had always wanted to do all her life. Besides, like she said, she wouldn't give me up permanently. I was just going to stay in a glass of water for at least two hours, maybe three and a half if the game went all the way to a penalty shootout. Still, I was going to miss the feeling of being right in the middle of the action live. Accessing the most recent memories was all well and good, but nothing still beats experiencing things as they happen. Well, once again, maybe not the tackles and the fouls and the landing and rolling on the grass parts.

"Okay, Coach, I'll do it," Jen replied. "I'll do what you want me to do."

"Good," Coach Karl said with a nod. "I'm glad that we were able to settle this without much argument and dispute. I guess that means that I will be seeing the two of you later this afternoon. That is all, thank you, you may go. Oh, and Ms. Carson, remember: training counts as well."

"Yes, Coach," Jen replied, nodding her head as she and Sonny stood up.

"You're crazy," Sonny said as the two of them walked back out to the training field. "You're crazy, Jennifer Carson, you know that? You didn't have to say yes to what Coach wants you to do. You didn't have to give up Yemra just so you could become the next Alex Morgan. You had the chance to stand up for your fellow Controller athletes, Jen, and you blew it! You blew it, and you know it!"

"You know, Sonny, for someone who's never had a Yeerk in her head her entire life, you're quite defensive when it comes to them," Jen said.

"Dude, why wouldn't I be?" Sonny said back. "You guys have always had the short end of the stick! You Controllers were barely better off than the nothlits after the end of the invasion. Remember those days when people were hunting down Controllers and roughing them up before turning them over to the cops and sometimes even killing them? And some of those people who did that are still out there and proud that they did it! Hate crime, my ass! People would still be beating Controllers up had that kid who got his brains and Yeerk beaten out of his head by those two other kids not gone nationwide! And now these people who have no idea what you Controllers have been through tell you that you can't play with a Yeerk in your head? Give me a break!"

"Okay, um, did we just do a Freaky Friday and switch bodies, because since when have you been this talkative, Sonny?" Jen asked once she was finally able to get a word in between Sonny's tirades. "And since when have you been this passionate about the plight of the Controllers?"

"Oh, come on, Jen! It's like you don't know me at all! I've always been pro-equality for all, even crazy and stupid people who actually want to have a body-snatching alien slug inside their heads. Everyone deserves equal rights, even the body-snatching aliens who now have to live on this planet because they've got no choice!"

"You know, you really should consider a career as a lobbyist," Jen told Sonny. "You've already got the mindset and the mouth for it. Why not go all the way?"

"How about Yemra, Jen? Aren't you worried at all that something might happen to her?" Sonny asked. "What if someone decides to drink the water with Yemra in it?"

"That's the good thing about the whole thing, Sonny," Jen said. "I don't have to keep Yemra in some water before a game. A new Pool just opened up in South Bend near the university so I can just pop Yemra there before the game and then pick her up after. In fact, I'm gonna do that right now, or rather two hours later because the first practice is, what, in three hours? Don't worry about me or Yemra, Sonny. I got this. _We_ got this."

As it would later turn out though, Jen actually did not got this.

* * *

If I had had a stomach the moment that Yibey had introduced himself, it would have probably tied itself in knots. As it was, I was feeling pretty tense myself. My own little Yeerk body could probably have become a Gordian knot of its own accord. But it was nothing compared to Karel beside. He was positively shaking in Yibey's presence. I could sense poor Karel exuding fear pheromones, and I couldn't help but feel slightly disgusted as well. (A Yeerk exuding fear pheromones is the equivalent of a human urinating or defecating themselves in response to a stressful situation.)

((You are… you're… you're a _Vex'not_ , sir?)) Karel asked shakily, his body trembling the whole time.

((Yes, I have already introduced to you who I am,)) Yibey replied with the Yeerkish equivalent of a shake of the head. ((And I am sure that you are both wondering why we are here talking privately in the sub-visser's Pool.))

 _This is it_ , I thought to myself. _I am about to be arrested and sentenced to the asteroids. All because I had blabbed about that damned Hork-Bajir to Gershi._ Accepting your fate is always easier when you know that you were the one who led yourself to it in the first place. And I was prepared to accept it with dignity. Not Karel though. He was the type who would do anything to avoid punishment, especially the one reserved for those with host sympathies.

What Karel did next was something that could have come straight out of a human comedy. ((I did nothing!)) Karel immediately cried out. ((I said nothing! I know nothing! I am a loyal soldier and supporter of the Yeerk Empire! We will crush the Andalites under our thumb! We are Yeerks! We will rule over all in the galaxy!))

It was fair to say that I could not have seen how funny that scene was at the time because I had no idea of the concept of comedy, but it also has to be said that Yibey found Karel's outburst amusing at the very least. ((You can stop spouting the imperial propaganda now, Karel,)) he said. ((I have already heard it enough times to be sick of it. And you know exactly what you said, Karel. As do you, Yemra. You know exactly what you said as well. Just because I am presently dealing with Karel here does not mean that I have forgotten about you, Yemra.))

((So it _is_ Gershi who reported us!)) Karel shouted. ((Sir, I'll have you know that whatever it is that Gershi said that I said to him, he has also told me, and much more! If anyone in here should be arrested for host sympathies, it should be him! Unless the very reason why you have not yet arrested Gershi is because you are using him to report other sympathizers to you!))

((You know, Karel, this is all amusing to watch,)) Yibey said, unable to control the humor in his voice. ((However, if you will just shut up for a moment and listen to me,)) he continued, now turning serious, ((then I can finally explain to the both of you what exactly is going on here.))

((I am not here to arrest either of you,)) Yibey said once Karel had managed to shut himself up. ((On the contrary, I am here to congratulate the both of you for having the courage to speak out against the policies of the Yeerk Empire.))

Now _that_ was something that I was not expecting. ((Excuse me, what?)) I asked.

((You two, Karel, Yemra, have come to the realization that the wellbeing of our hosts is vitally important to our race,)) Yibey replied. ((Yes, it is an inescapable fact of our lives that we need to have hosts if we are to defeat the Andalites and liberate our brothers and sisters still trapped on our homeworld, but that does not give us the right to treat our hosts like vermin and use them only as vehicles to achieve our ultimate goal. And why should we stop there too? Why do we have to approach our potential hosts as invaders and enemies, not friends? Surely if we showed them that we can be good and compassionate to them then they will be more likely to agree to let us infest them and not resist as hard as everyone else has against us before? Then we need not expend even more resources fighting against our potential hosts and killing them instead of incorporating them peacefully into our empire. This is a simple idea, and yet the Emperor and the Council of Thirteen cannot think of anything other than total conquest because they have become too obsessed on the idea of defeating the Andalites through conquests of our own. But it doesn't have to be that way. There is a way for our empire to expand peacefully. We as a species only have to realize, as you two and I already have, that it is better to have a friend for a host than an enemy.))

Yibey then floated over closer to Karel and I and extended his palps over to us. ((You might think that I am asking too much of you,)) he said, ((and you might be right. But if the Yeerks are to advance as a species and as a nation then we must be skilled at both peace and war. And I know that while our number is small right, there are many other Yeerks out there who believe all that I have told you even if they might not speak of it for fear of being accused as a host sympathizer. We only have to find them and let them know that they are not alone. So, who's with me?))

Karel and I were both very reluctant to take Yibey at his word just yet. For all we knew, he was the one who was pretending to be sympathizing with the sympathizers and then, once we had twisted our palps together (a gesture similar to a handshake in human terms), that would be the signal for the guards to scoop us out of the Pool sludge and throw us on a ship bound for the asteroids. Yet I could also feel a sincerity emanating from Yibey, that he sincerely believed his words and was not just reciting lines from memory. And if this was indeed the start of a genuine movement to raise awareness of our treatment of our hosts across the Empire then I didn't want to miss out on it. So I made the first move, and I twisted one of my palps around one of Yibey's, and then I extended my other palp towards Karel. He was more hesitant to twist palps; as you may have noticed, he was quite paranoid. But the Yeerk instinct towards community eventually got the better of him and he twisted his palps with Yibey's and mine as well.

((Thank you, my friends,)) Yibey said once we had untwisted our palps. ((Now I give you both a mission: find these other Yeerks who believe in our ideals. If you know someone who believes, talk to them, but as much as possible do not mention outright you are part of our group because these other Yeerks might be the ones that Karel here is deathly afraid of. But if you believe that they are truly sincere in their statements and beliefs then all well and good. When you have found two of these Yeerks who believe in our ideals, find a place and an opportunity for the three of you to get together and induct them into the group. Then once they are a part of the group, tell them what I told you and send them out to find two more Yeerks who believe.))

((Why only two, _Vex'not_?)) I asked. ((Why not recruit as many Yeerks as we can?))

((As you can tell by the fact that the three of us are meeting privately at the sub-vissers' Pool, secrecy is of the utmost importance for our group,)) Yibey replied. ((If we as a group expand very quickly then that is sure to attract the attention of the Vissers. One member recruiting two new members has been judged as the best method of expanding membership in our group while at the same time still keeping it a secret. Now, are there any other questions that any of you would like to ask? None? Then may the Kandrona shine down upon us all.))

And that was the story of how I became part of the Yeerk Peace Movement. Of course, back then it wasn't called that. I don't think it even had a name back then; we all just called it "the group", perhaps intentionally to confuse those who weren't supposed to be listening to us, but mostly maybe because we didn't know what to call ourselves until we had discovered Earth and began infesting humans. I can tell you that this was a decision that I had never ever regretted in my whole life, not like a certain someone who thought that she could get away with dropping me off at a Pool before she played soccer. But that's another story for another time.


	7. The Beautiful Game

_Hey there, girlfriend_ , I said as I finished making my connections to Jen's brain. _So, how did the game go? Did you get to play?_

((Oh, come on, Yems, are you kidding me?)) Jen asked back as she stood up from the infestation pier. ((I just got here. I'm still a freaking freshman. They're not going to start me in the very first game of the season right off the bat!))

 _Okay, no need to be defensive,_ I said as we walked out of the Yeerk Pool and into the light of the afternoon. _I was just asking you how your day went._

((When you ask nicely, you're gonna get a nice answer,)) Jen replied.

 _That doesn't even make any sense. I asked you nicely the first time._

((Oh, all right. I was on the bench. I got to warm up a few times. But I didn't even play. I just sat around and walked around and did some jumping jacks. We drew 2-2 with Wake Forest. Wanna see?))

 _No, I think I'm good. The memories should still be easily accessible as long as they're still in the short-term memory area._

((Oh, please, have a look. It's not like Sonny and I are gonna be doing much,)) Jen said as she waved her hand at Sonny Torres. ((Oh, and speaking of Sonny, you're gonna wanna see what happened in injury time. You will _not_ believe what happened in injury time.))

 _All right, if you insist…_ I said even as Jen was already focusing on Sonny and asking her where they were going to eat a post-game snack. The memory that she was talking about was already on the forefront of Jen's mind, and it was just a matter of playing it back. As Jen had mentioned, the score was 2-2 between Notre Dame and Wake Forest, and it was the fourth of five minutes of injury time in the second half. Jen was indeed on the bench for the game, but Sonny had been subbed on as part of Coach Karl's strategy to grab the win. Sonny's position was usually listed as an attacking midfielder but she (Sonny, I mean) liked to describe herself as a second striker who makes her way into the box hoping to pounce on the other team's mistakes to score. In this situation, Notre Dame had surged forward and flooded Wake Forest's box, hoping for anyone to score off of a cross or a corner or a mistake.

"Come on, ND," Jen said as she watched the game from the edge of her seat on the bench, along with some of her teammates. "Come on!" Even Coach Karl was gesturing for his team to keep pushing for that third and winning goal that would get the Fighting Irish's season off to a good, winning start. Jen's focus seemed to shift between the ball and the game itself, and even though she was not playing Jen couldn't help but look at the situation from a player's perspective, and specifically a striker's perspective for her, as she was looking for the pockets of space in the box and mentally calling for a cross once she saw a real player occupy the same space she would have occupied had she been playing herself.

And then it so happened that it was Sonny Torres who was in that pocket of space, and the cross finally came in from the right. The ball flew straight in the middle of the box and hit Sonny on the forehead before dropping to the ground right at her feet. Everything seemed to slow down even though Jen was just watching and not playing, and Sonny actually seemed to juggle the ball with her feet before she finally turned to face the goal. "Come on, Sonny, shoot!" Jen shouted, a sentiment echoed by the rest of her teammates and even the coaching staff. Sonny was only too happy to oblige, and she had a golden chance to become a Notre Dame soccer legend on her very first game (not that Notre Dame and Wake Forest were rivals in the way that Arsenal, Jen's favorite soccer team, and Tottenham Hotspur were). _**(Jen: Three words: North London derby. Look it up.)**_ But, faced with said golden opportunity, Sonny messed it up, and she messed it up real bad. She had the goal gaping in front of her, as Jen described it in her mind. The Wake Forest goalkeeper was at the left side of the goal, giving Sonny a wide open space to the right into which to send the ball and score the winning goal. But Sonny didn't fire the ball into that space. Instead, she kicked the ball so hard that it actually flew above the goal and into the safety netting behind that was there to keep the ball within the stadium (which was more of a field than anything, and certainly nothing on the level of Notre Dame's football stadium).

"Oh, my God, Sonny!" Jen screamed, and she was almost at the point of tearing her hair out in frustration. "What the fuck was that! That was a fucking sitter and you missed it! Oh, my God!" Jen then had to sit back down again to catch her breath. "I would have scored that," she said to herself. "I would have scored that chance!"

"What are you laughing at?" Sonny asked Jen back in the present day as they walked down the road back to their dorm.

"Oh, you know exactly what I'm laughing at," Jen replied even as she tried, and failed, to suppress her sniggers.

"Hey, not everybody can be a great tap-in merchant like you, you know," Sonny retorted.

"Hey, I resent that," Jen said. "I am not just a tap-in merchant. I am also a penalty merchant. They don't call me Pen Carson for nothing, remember?" It was a pun, with Jen rhyming with Pen, which in this context means a penalty kick in soccer. She had gotten that nickname for her reputation of scoring her goals from penalty kicks back in high school.

"And you're so damn proud of it, aren't you?" Sonny asked, but she asked it with a knowing smile and a resigned shake of her head.

"You know how it is with us strikers and forwards. Any chance to get a goal, we take it. Unlike you."

"Oh, give it a rest already!" Sonny moaned.

* * *

I remember the first time that Jen played a game of soccer with me in her head. It was the first time that I had been inside the head of an athletically inclined human, which provided a contrast to my first human host, Mallory Brunner, who although she was a fan of the local sports teams like the 76ers, Eagles, and Flyers, never really kept track of the teams' results and progress through the standings. Not Jen, though. She tries to get her hands on the results of her favorite teams as soon as she can, usually by looking them up on the Internet or the news, if the sports section happens to come up.

But back to my first soccer game inside Jen's head. It was a cool autumn afternoon, the sky blue and the wind blowing right down the field. It was the first game of the season for Jen's high school soccer team, and there had been talk that Jen would not start or even play in this first game because of concerns about the long-term effects of her banging her head in the river just a few months ago, but those rumors proved to be nothing but when Jen was told to report for training on the Saturday before the game.

The first thing that I noticed before the game even started was that everything looked so different. Everything seemed much closer to me than I could remember. And then I realized, of course everything would be closer. I was standing right in the middle of the action now. I was no longer just a spectator watching from the sidelines; I was now a player myself. Of course I, meaning me, the Yeerk Yemra, was not the one playing; that would be Jen Carson. But you know what I'm talking about. The difference in perspectives between when I watched the game from the sidelines and when I was actually right in the middle of the game was an eye-opener, to say the least. And it also didn't help that Jen's body was flooded with at least twice the adrenaline that Mallory had, and the game hadn't even started yet.

I watched silently as Jen went through her pre-game rituals, things she did to pump her up for the next ninety minutes. It was very much a ritual; there were a lot of chants involved, mostly about Jen praising her own skills while at the same time telling herself that their opponents were an enemy that needed to be defeated. Eventually, Jen finished her ritual, and she stepped up to a spot just outside of the center of the field. The ball itself was in the center, and Carina Russolini, another one of Jen's friends, was standing over it. "You sure you still wanna play, Jen?" she asked. "It's just been two months since, um, you know…"

"I'll be all right," Jen replied. "It's not like I forgot how to play soccer or anything. I'm still the same Jen Carson who went to your birthday party not knowing I was gonna slip in the river." ((Except for the alien slug that's now in my head,)) she added to herself.

"Yeah, well, one thing's for sure: my birthdays are never gonna be the same again," Carina muttered.

While Jen and Carina had been talking, I had tried to distract myself from the thundering of Jen's hearbeat and the masses of microvolts surging around in her brain by looking around her field of vision, trying to identify the faces with those in Jen's memories. Carina was obviously front and center and, since Jen was talking to her, was right on the surface of Jen's memory bank. Further away and to the right was Julia Baker, Jen's BFF (best friend forever), while to the left were two players in dark red whom Jen didn't know by name, but she knew them by their faces, their numbers, and their team (Wyomissing High). And out of the corner of Jen's eye, I spotted a girl wearing an orange shirt and shorts, and black gloves and socks who appeared to be giving commands to the players in dark red. I wondered if this was going to have any significance to the game so I decided to file away the moment in my mind.

The referee blew his whistle, and Carina passed the ball to Jen. While all this was happening, I told Jen about the girl in orange giving orders to the girls in dark red. _Is that important?_ I asked her.

((Oh!)) Jen exclaimed. ((Hang on a minute there, Yemra. Let me just do something here.)) Jen then cocked her right foot back, and then she swung it as hard as she could at the ball, which flew high and long towards the other side of the pitch. The wind was blowing right into Jen's face, which meant that it was also blowing right into the ball, and it showed in the ball's sudden and sharp descent as opposed to its long and gradual takeoff. The girl in orange had tried to run towards the ball as it began to fall in her general direction, but she then made the mistake of jumping too soon and just a little too far away, and she could only reach out for the ball with her gloved hand before it slipped away from her, bounced once, and rolled into the goal.

"Oh, my God, it worked!" Jen yelled out even as her teammates were already surrounding her in celebration. "It really actually fucking worked!" To this day, it remains the fastest goal scored in the history of the high school soccer team, as well as the longest (or furthest) goal scored by an outfield player for the team. And it also proved to be the decisive and winning goal in that first game as nobody else, not even Jen, was able to score for the next 89 minutes. So you could say that I technically won my first ever soccer game, even though all I did at that time was tell Jen about the goalkeeper being so far off of her line.

That first ever soccer game also gave me a first taste of what would eventually become what I will admit to being an addiction. I didn't know that it was possible to feel almost every single emotion in the human spectrum in just ninety minutes; sometimes even less than that. The exhilaration of scoring a goal; that was quite obvious, especially when that goal turns out to be the game-winning one. The tension of waiting for that cross, corner, or free kick to fly towards you so that you could turn it into the net; that was another thing that I liked about soccer. The joy of winning a game, especially when winning that game also meant winning a trophy; that was like no other feeling in the world. Even the disappointment that came with losing or even just drawing a game, especially a game that we could have won if only a few things had fallen in our favor was a feeling that, while I didn't really enjoy them as much as the others, I knew that it still played an important part in the full enjoyment of the game.

Yes, I was not afraid to admit it: I had become addicted to The Beautiful Game.

So when the time came for me to get out of Jen's head whenever she had to train and/or play for Notre Dame, I couldn't say that I wasn't disappointed. Sure, I knew why I had to get out of her head until after the game, but that didn't make it any easier for me (and for Jen, but we'll get to that later). Still, I had her memories to peruse, but it was still a completely different thing to be right in the thick of things, as it were.

* * *

I tuned out Jen and Sonny's conversation as I replayed Jen's memories of Notre Dame versus Wake Forest. In my own judgment, it was a pretty exciting enough game, with enough action and drama to keep even someone with only a passing interest in the game hooked all throughout the ninety. But for someone like me who had seen, played in more soccer games than I could count, the game between Notre Dame and Wake Forest was, well, meh, for lack of a better term. Yes, it was still an exciting and frantic game, but I just knew that it had to have been so much better if I was there. Not even to assist Jen, just to watch the game through her eyes. I bet the running commentary in her head would have been wonderful to hear.

((Yeah, no. Trust me, it wasn't,)) Jen replied even as she continued talking to Sonny. ((I wasn't even saying much. Probably because there wasn't anyone up in there to talk with.))

Having satisfied myself with watching Jen's memories of the match, I trawled through some of her more recent memories, specifically the ones she made while waiting for me to finish "feeding". _Oh, hello, what have we here?_ I said as I watched Jen talk to a brown-skinned human male with big broad shoulders that didn't seem to fit with his small and slender frame. _Who are we talking to here, Jen?_ I asked in a teasing tone.

((Nunya.))

 _Last name?_

((None ya business, Yems!)) Jen retorted. ((All right, no, but seriously, he's just some guy I met at the Pool. He actually studies at Notre Dame too. He even plays for the football team. Freshman quarterback. So, like me, he hasn't had a lot of chances to play. He's taking it in stride. Heck, Notre Dame wouldn't want to get him if he wasn't good, right?))

 _You have a point, Jen_ , I conceded. _So you met…_

((Danny. Danny Villavicencio.))

 _So you met Danny Villavicencio at the Pool,_ I continued. _Does he have something in common with you or is he just about to get it?_

((Oh, he already has. Why do you think he was waiting in the Pool with me? But seriously though, when you think about it, surely he can't be allowed to train or play with _his_ Yeerk in his head as well, can he? I don't know about either college football or the NFL, but surely they just take the lead with everyone else and do what everyone else does?))

 _How should I know? I'm not in the CFB or the NFL! I don't know the answer to those questions!_

((And when you think about it, does having a Yeerk have any effect on getting concussions?)) Jen continued. ((A Yeerk's wrapped around a brain, right? Surely that has to have some effect on how the brain moves around during a collision. A Yeerk acts like some sort of padding, right?))

 _Oh, is that all that I am to you now? Padding around your precious, precious brain? I thought you were better than that, Jennifer Carson!_ I said. _And to answer your first question, not every Yeerk wraps themselves around their hosts' brains. Some of the ones I know like to just sit around in that valley between the hemispheres and control everything from there. So just because you have a Yeerk in your head doesn't mean that you can't get a concussion ever again!_

((But are _you_ wrapped around my head, Yems?)) Jen asked me.

 _Yes, but that's not my point at all!_

((Oh, yeah? Then what _is_ your point?))

 _I can't even remember at all_ , I admitted. _What_ were _we talking about again?_

((Probably for the best that we both forgot about it. Makes concentrating on our food just that much easier. We're getting wings tonight. Sonny's buying.))

 _Ooh, I wonder if there's either garlic or spicy wings there,_ I said. _I'm craving for some garlic and spicy wings. Maybe we might even get some spicy garlic wings!_

And so things would continue for the next few weeks. Every hour before practice and training, Jen would drop me off at the Pool near Notre Dame, and then she would come back for me two or three hours later. As for the game days themselves, Jen dropped me off at the South Bend Pool before the game against Pittsburgh, and then when Jen was named as part of the team that would go to Florida State, Jen made sure to memorize the location to the nearest Pool so that she could deposit me there before the game. I swam around for three hours, met some Yeerks who had been relocated here following local demand in Tallahassee for a Pool of their own, and then I saw with my sonar Jen's face plunge into the Pool.

 _Hey, Jen,_ I said once I was fully connected to her once again. _So how did it go?_

((I finally got to play, Yems,)) Jen replied. ((I even scored a goal.))

 _Hey! That's good news! Right?_

((Yeah, good news,)) Jen muttered, almost as if she wasn't as enthused as her words would suggest.

 _Jen! Is something wrong?_ I asked. I had never before heard Jen sound this sad right after a game of soccer. Well, maybe after those games where she lost to a rival team or lost in a cup final or semifinal. This was a very different kind of sadness. It sounded as if Jen was lost, as if she had lost something in her as well.

((No, no, nothing's wrong,)) Jen pressed. ((I'm all right. I'm A-OK.))

 _You know, Jen, whenever you say you're A-OK, you're anything but,_ I said. _Come on. Out with it!_

((Just take a look at my memories, Yems. You'll know what I'm talking about,)) Jen replied with a heavy mental sigh that carried itself over to the physical world with Jen sighing loudly.

So I did. Notre Dame won 3-1 against Florida State, and as Jen said, she had scored a goal, her first goal as a Fighting Irish, coming off the bench in the 80th minute and then heading home the third goal of the game for Notre Dame just five minutes later to secure all three points. At that point, I remembered just how excited Jen had been when she had scored her first ever soccer goal, as well as her first goal for her high school, and her excitement, happiness, and glee in those moments were a far cry from the emotions that she had felt when she scored her first goal for Notre Dame. Sure, she was happy, and she celebrated the goal, but it was nothing like the other first goals that she had scored.

 _Jen! What happened to you?_ I asked. _What's going on here? This isn't like you! This isn't the Jen Carson that I know!_

((I know, right!?)) Jen replied. ((I can't even explain it! It's like I'm there, but at the same time I'm not. You know what I mean?))

 _Eh, not really,_ I admitted. _But I have to say that this is indeed very worrying. When did this start?_

((I don't know, Yems. I didn't even realize it was happening until just now, just before I came to pick you up. And then after that, it's now the only thing I can think of. I just can't stop thinking about it!))

 _This is serious, Jen. You need to talk to someone about this_ , I told her.

((Maybe, maybe,)) she nodded. ((But I think I'll be all right for right now. Maybe this is just a one-off thing. Maybe this is all gonna blow over soon, and I'll be back to my normal soccer-loving self.))

 _I can only hope that you're right, Jen,_ I said. But as it turned out, Jen was wrong. This was not a one-off thing; this didn't blow over soon, and she didn't get all right soon after.


	8. That Escalated Quickly

A/N: I've had to bump this story up to T because of some heavy swearing in this chapter. The story just sort of headed that way, and attempts to make the swearing milder just made things awkward. So there. This is now rated T. I wish I could have kept it K+, but there you go. - GR

* * *

I was asleep, coiled around the cortical folds of Jennifer Carson's brain when I felt something soft hit my face. (Well, actually, it was Jen's face that got hit since I had no face to speak of and it was physically impossible for any human or other being to hit me while I was inside Jen's head, but you know what I'm talking about.) "What the hell!?" Jen's voice thundered throughout her mind as I was roused from my own slumber by the sudden wave of activity in her brain.

"Wake up, Jennifer," Sonia Torres called out as she caught the pillow that she had thrown at Jen to wake her up. Jen had thrown the pillow back to Sonny in response to being woken up so rudely. "Rise and shine, baby! We've got lots of work to do?"

"What the hell is this about, Torres?" Jen asked groggily as she slowly raised herself up to a sitting position on her bed and rubbed away the grime at the corners of her eyes. "Is it six PM already? Please tell me it's not six PM already. I _have_ to get to Neuro-Anatomy on time so I don't have to play catch-up with the Old Man again, and then I have to pull that all-nighter for Statistics for the long quiz tomorrow."

"Don't worry about the time just yet, Carson," Sonny replied. "You've still enough time left to get to that. Look at me! I'm taking time off from studying for Latin American Literature for this!"

"Well, good for you," Jen muttered as she searched for the nearest pair of either shorts or jeans and a bra. As she took off her pajama shorts and put on a pair of jean shorts that cut off at the thighs, she happened to notice what Sonny was holding. "What's the soccer ball and the paper tape for?" Jen asked.

"You'll find out once you finish getting dressed and follow me out of here," Sonny replied.

"Not everyone gets to wake up dolled up and ready to go like you, Sonia," Jen said under her breath as she finished fastening her bra. Jen followed Sonny out of their dorm room before walking out of the dorm itself. The dorm was a few miles away from both the town of South Bend and Notre Dame itself, but both places were still within walking distance. Except Sonny was headed for neither the town nor the university. Instead, she headed for the line of trees that had been planted on the other side of the road from the dormitory itself. Jen and I watched as Sonny walked between the trees with some sort of measured pace until she finally came across two trees which were, for her, sufficiently separated from each other. And then she unfurled the tape and brought it across the gap between the trees at just above her head.

"Sonia Maria Allison Torres," Jennifer said, "what in the world are you doing?"

"I'm helping you out, sis," Sonny replied. "I'm helping you get your love for soccer back."

"I'm sorry, Sonny, but there must be something wrong here," Jen said, holding up her hand. "Since when have I not loved soccer?"

"Uh, since Coach Karl asked you to leave Yemra behind because he didn't want her causing issues with FIFA or something?" Sonny replied once she had finished fixing the tape between the trees.

"Is that what this is?" Jen asked. "Are you making me train while Yemra's in my head? Is that what this is?"

"Hey, I'm just testing out a theory here," Sonny said quietly, raising her arms to her chest in seeming surrender.

"Is it really your theory or did Yemra talk you into this?" Jen asked. "Have the two of you been talking about me behind my back?"

"Well, I… Wait, what… Okay, what does that even mean?" Sonny stammered before she finally managed to say what she wanted to say. "How am I supposed to talk about you to Yemra behind your back? She's wrapped around your brain like frigging Cling-Wrap! How can you not know that Yemra and I have been talking about you? How is that even possible?"

 _Um, well,_ I said as Jen turned her attention to me, _I may have talked to Sonny at least once or twice while you were napping._

((You were taking control of my body without my permission?)) Jen asked me. ((You've been taking control of me while I was asleep?))

 _Hey, you may not want to talk to anyone about what you've been going through, but I do! You need help, Jen. Don't deny it._

((I'm not denying anything! I'm just saying that I don't need any help because there's nothing in me to help with! Okay, you and I seriously need to talk about what you've been doing with my body while I've been asleep!))

"Jen! Jennifer!" Sonny called out. "If you could just stop arguing with your brain slug for a sec, we'll be done with this in no time and you can get back to your power nap for your Neurobiology or whatever it is you study for with all the facial and spinal nerves and shit, and I can get back to reading and reviewing my reaction paper for _The House of the Spirits_." Sonny then dropped the soccer ball to the ground and rolled it towards Jen's feet.

"What the heck am I supposed to do with this?" Jen asked.

"Okay, just indulge me in this for a moment, Jen," Sonny replied. "Imagine we're at the game. For whatever reason, you're one on one against me. Try and score a goal."

"Okay, Sonia, what is this?" Jen repeated.

"Like I said, I'm testing out a theory. Just imagine that the trees are the goalposts and the tape is the crossbar. You're one on one, and I'm standing still because I know I'm no Manuel Neuer or Patty the Fatty. Now come at me, bro. Give me your best shot."

"Patty the Fatty?" Jen asked even as she rolled the ball under her right foot. "That's awfully politically incorrect of you, Sonia. Since when did you become a fat shamer?"

"Patty says she doesn't mind getting called Fatty," Sonny replied. "And not just because I've got a bit of a FUPA and a thicc booty myself." Sonny then seemed to realize what was happening, and she said, "All right, Jen, enough stalling! If you want to have enough time to take a shower and change into some less revealing clothes then just take a shot at me!"

"All right, fine!" Jen shouted, and she slotted the ball towards the tree to the right. Sonny didn't make any move to block the ball; she just stood rooted at the spot and watched the ball roll past her. "Goal!" Sonny said, raising her hands above her head (which was actually the signal for a touchdown in American football, a completely different sport from soccer). As she ran underneath the tape to retrieve the ball, she asked, "So how did that make you feel, Jen?"

"Why are you asking me that for?" Jen asked.

"Just answer the question! Or else I'll make Yemra answer it for you!"

"You wouldn't!" Jen said hotly. ((And the same to you, Yemra Six-Four-Zero!)) she mind-shouted at me.

 _It was just one question, Jen,_ I said. _It wouldn't hurt you to answer it, would you?_

Jen thought about it, and she sighed, both physically and mentally. ((Yeah, I guess it won't,)) she admitted. "Yeah, I guess I could say I liked it," she told Sonny. "Not that you made it really hard for me back then."

"All right, now that's more like it," Sonny said. "But just how much, how exactly did you like it, Jen? Did you just like it in a meh way or did you like it in an 'Oh, yeah!' way?"

"What's that supposed to mean? What's that supposed to mean, Sonia?"

"Oh, you know exactly what I mean, Jennifer."

"What do you want me to say? That I liked it when I scored against you? Sure, suppose that I say that," Jen said, spreading her arms wide. "That doesn't prove a single thing. All that proves is that you're trying to get me riled up all over nothing."

"Over nothing, huh? All right, let's do this again," Sonny said. "Except this time, Yems, you gotta get out of Jen's head."

"Wait, what!?" Jen exclaimed even as Sonny was already retrieving the soccer ball. "Why does Yemra have to get out of my head? What has that got to do with anything? And where am I supposed to put Yems? I can't hold her in my hand or stuff her into my pocket; she might get crushed!"

 _Why, that's awfully thoughtful of you, Jen,_ I said.

Sonny returned with the ball and tossed a small bottle of water to Jen. "All right, Yems, time to go," she said.

 _Goodbye, girls,_ I said as I disengaged from my connections to Jen's brain. ((Wait, Yems! What are you—)) The rest of Jen's sentence was cut off by me severing my links to her speech and language centers, and once I started to crawl out of her ear canal I had given Jen no choice but to catch me and put me in the water while she and Sonny continued to do the little test that Sonny and I had indeed talked about while Jen was sleeping. It wasn't easy, taking control of Jen's body as an observer while she was asleep (it was oftentimes better for a Yeerk to be the one in control if they wanted to use their host's body while the host's consciousness was asleep) but I was nevertheless able to do it. It was just a matter of timing my attempt at taking over with certain brainwave patterns.

I could feel the vibrations of Jen and Sonny's further conversations through the plastic of the bottle itself and the water inside, but of course I couldn't distinguish the words from the vibrations as I didn't have the necessary organs to translate and process the vibrations into auditory input that I could understand. I felt the bottle moving around as Sonny made Jen try to score another goal against her between their makeshift goalposts, and then after that came a sort of rhythmic vibrations around me that I took to be Jen walking back to the dorm. Something must have happened between Jen and Sonny to piss Jen off, so much so that she couldn't even be bothered to put me back in her head for the walk back to the dorm.

My bottle of water then went still for what was to me a long and unknown amount of time before it was finally lifted up and the contents emptied into a cup, and I felt fingers plucking me out of the water and lifting me towards a small hole, an earhole according to my sonar. I squeezed into the ear canal, squirted out my painkillers, traveled through the eardrum and inner ear and down the nerve before I finally reached the brain. When I got there and made my connections, I saw that Jen was standing in front of the bathroom sink, looking grimly at the mirror. Once I gave back control of her body, Jen put on her earrings and tied up her hair into a loose bun. She then went out of the bathroom and her dorm room itself, pausing only to say, "Thanks for nothing, Torres," before she continued on her walk back to the university for her Neuro-Anatomy class.

 _All right, Jen, what is going on in here?_ I asked, and I delved into her most recent memories. I went past the actual most recent memories, the ones she had formed right before this point in time, and I also passed by memories of Jen studying the twelve cranial nerves like the facial nerve, the glossopharyngeal nerve, the optical and olfactory nerves, and the auditory nerve, down which I had just gone to reach Jen's brain. And then I finally reached the memory I was looking for, the one that Jen made at the moment that I had left her brain.

"All right, so Yems is now gone," Jen said as she dropped me into the bottle. "What now?"

"Try to score against me again," Sonny replied. "Come on, just try to thunder one in if you want."

"Oh, you want me to thunder one in?" Jen muttered as she began dribbling the ball with her feet. This particular memory was charged with frustration and even quite a bit of anger, and even before it happened, I could already see what Jen was about to do. "You asked for this, Sonia!" Jen shouted, and she kicked the ball as hard as she could straight at Sonny, who of course immediately held up her hands in front of her face to protect it from the ball.

"Okay, now why would you do that for!?" Sonny demanded to know once she had finally gotten over the shock. "Why the hell would you kick the ball straight at me!?"

"Oh, don't act so innocent around me now," Jen scoffed. "You know exactly why I just tried to take your head off!"

"You know what? This is almost exactly what happened when I tried to call you out on your cutting classes, Carson," Sonny said, walking up to Jen and pointing an accusing finger at her. "I told you that you were cutting classes not because you were bored at school but because you liked the thrill of breaking the rules, your parents' rules, but did you listen? No! You wouldn't hear of it! You didn't want to hear it from me because you were so busy denying the truth, even to yourself! And now you're doing the same thing right now! You know that not having Yemra in your head during the games is affecting your play, but you're denying that because… reasons, I suppose! No, no, I've got it! You're denying it because you're hoping that some scout from the USSF is gonna notice you and call you up to the national team, even though we both know that the chances of that happening is the same as the Browns winning the Super Bowl!"

"Sonny, will you please just stop?" Jen shouted. "This is so not like the time you called me out on cutting my classes! This is a way different thing! I'm not breaking rules this time around; I'm actually following them!"

"That is exactly the same thing that you told me when I called you out, Jennifer! All right, you know what? Enough of this bullshit! And enough with you! If you don't want me to help you out then turn around, walk away, and don't look back!"

"Yeah, I might just do that!" Jen shouted, and that was exactly what she did, walk away from Sonny and the trees and the tape. "And fuck you too, you bitch! _Mrenig laklat!_ " she added as she clenched her left fist and raised her middle finger at Sonny.

"Okay, I may not understand what you just said, but I know that you just cussed me!" Sonny shouted to Jen's back. "And you do not want to get into a cussing contest with me! Take your pick, bitch: you want me to curse you in Spanish or Polish? Cause I can do both, _pendeja_! _Chinga tu madre, puta_! _Spierdalaj ty glupia pizda, kurwa_!"

"Oh, just shut the fuck up!" Jen yelled, although by this time her anger and frustration were subsiding and making way for regret and second-guessing. _Maybe I shouldn't have gone off on Sonny like that_ , she thought to herself. _Maybe Sonny does have a point. But it's too late now. I'm not going to go back there and tell her that she was right and I was wrong. And I am definitely going to have to talk to Yemra about this and her taking control of me while I'm asleep. Man, I trusted that worm! I let her live in my head and this is how she repays me? Argh! This isn't fair! None of this freaking is! Fuck everyone and everything!_

 _Okay, Jen, now you're just being unfair_ , I said once I was done looking at her memories. _If you want to say something, then say something!_

((Bitch, please! I am not interested in talking about anything to anyone right now, including you! Especially you! So shut up and let me just get through this day without killing somebody!)) And so I did, and I kept quiet for the rest of Jen's journey to her classroom, and I didn't say anything except a quick goodbye when I had to get out of her head for her Neuro-Anatomy exam.

Two hours later, I was back in Jen's head, and Jen was back in her dorm room, changing into her nightclothes and getting ready to sleep. Jen had originally planned to study for Statistics that night but instead, she decided that she would rather sleep because, in her words, she had had enough of all the drama that had happened that afternoon, and she was not in the mood to stay up late after that. While Jen had been changing, I noticed that Sonny Torres was also asleep, but her head was lying at the foot of her bed, surrounded by her books and papers, and her feet were the ones lying on her pillow. _Should we wake her up?_ I asked Jen as she got ready for bed. _I think we should wake her up. She said she needs to study for Latin American Literature, so maybe we should wake her up._

((Nah, let her sleep,)) Jen replied. ((Let her deal with her own shit herself. As for you, Yemra Six-Four-Zero of the Zek Danet Pool, don't think that just because I'm talking to you right now that I've forgiven you. I haven't. We are _so_ gonna have a very long talk about this. It may not be like one of Mom's very long talks, but don't expect that you're going to get away lightly with this!))

 _And what about you and your Statistics quiz? I thought you were going to study for that tonight as well._

((I'm tired as fuck, Yemra,)) Jen replied. ((I try to study right now and in my current state of mind and I will absorb and learn literally nothing. Besides, Statistics isn't until tomorrow afternoon. I can squeeze in some studying tomorrow morning. Now, if you have nothing more to say to me, good night.)) With that said, Jen closed her eyes, and I was now stuck inside a body that was preparing to shut down and rest in preparation for the next day.

But I wasn't done with the day just yet. I waited until Jen had finally lapsed into her sleep, and then I waited some more for the moment before she entered REM sleep before I tried to take control of her body. All Yeerks could do it, of course, take control of their host's body while said host was sleeping, but it was also easier to do if it was the Yeerk who was in control and not the host. In my case, as I was the observer and not the one in command, I had to wait for the right moment to take control, which was the point just before the brain went from non-REM sleep to REM sleep. It was so easy to go too early or too late and miss that sweet spot; too early and you don't take control at all, and too late and you either end up waking the host or tuning in to their dreams, or sometimes nightmares. It took me many hours of practice to find the sweet spot just before Jen's transition to REM sleep, but find it I did, although by my own admission I had no real use for this skill, at least until now.

I waited for the sweet spot to come, and then once I sensed it, I extended my control all over Jen's body, and just like that I was now in control of Jennifer Carson. Her consciousness was still sound asleep, and I made sure that she would remain that way inside her own mind while I opened her eyes and moved her body and sat it up. I then stood up and walked over to Sonny's bed, and I gently shook her awake. "Sonny, Sonny, wake up," I said quietly, even though we were the only ones in the room at the moment.

"Clara and Ferula are so lowkey gay for each other," Sonny said as she woke up. She rolled around on her bed a little and stretched her body, and then she noticed who exactly had woken her up and she snorted derisively. "Oh, it's you," she muttered. "What do you want now?"

"Sonny, it's Yemra, not Jen," I said.

"Oh. Why didn't you say so?" Sonny asked as she sat up on her bed. "Well, that didn't go well, did it?"

"Yes, indeed," I replied. "Even I was not expecting Jen to go off on you like that. That was not the reaction that I expected that we would get from her."

"Yeah, she really went off on the both of us, didn't she?" Sonny muttered. "Well, I can't say I blame her. If I had a brain slug of my own and she was taking over my body while I was sleeping to talk about things and arrange things behind my back, I'd be pissed too. And it looks like you're about to dig yourself into a bigger hole if she ever wakes up and sees us talking like this again."

"Don't worry, Sonia, I have made sure that Jen will not awake during our conversation," I assured her. "Anyway, have there been any replies to your inquiries?" I asked.

"Yeah, to put it simply, no," Sonny replied. "I've been checking my email daily, hourly if I have the chance. But still nothing. It's like none of them want to finally set the record straight and give everyone a clear definition of whether a Yeerk counts as an extra player or not. You would think that this is exactly the kind of thing that they would want to sink their teeth into, but no, they're all not having any of it. It's just so frustrating!"

"I mean, you humans do have an expression for this, if I remember correctly," I said. "What was it again? 'Rome wasn't built in a day'?"

"I know, I know," Sonny admitted. "It's just that… maybe I just expected too much of something. Or maybe this is something that's never gonna be solved in our lifetimes. I guess I was just disappointed by the response, or lack of it, in fact."

"I had always thought that you humans were used to being disappointed by your own kind," I mused.

"I know," Sonny admitted. "But every time humanity comes together in support of each other for whatever reason, my faith in us gets restored, you know?" Sonny sighed, and then she looked around the room a little bit before she turned back to me. "So, are you going to help Jen with her Statistics quiz now?" she asked.

"I could, but I'm the only one who's going to remember and retain the information," I replied. "And that's not going to be of any use if I'm not inside Jen's head during the quiz anyway. How about you? What have you learned about… what you have been reading so far?"

"Yeah, nothing much, actually," Sonny admitted with a smile. "All I've learned so far is that the CIA helped overthrow Chile's democratically elected president and replaced him with a dictator so that Chile wouldn't become Communist. And it happened on September 11 as well, 1973 to be exact, so when you ask a Chilean about 9/11, this is what they're going to remember and not the Twin Towers attack. Man, it really does suck to be American sometimes, doesn't it?"

"Yes, maybe, but it's not like we can go back in time and change history, can we?" I said with a smile. That smile then turned into a yawn, and I could feel the first fingers of drowsiness creeping into my own mind. "That's a nice thought for me to keep before I go to sleep," I said. "Good night, Sonny. I hope that you and Jen can fix things between the two of you, just because of me."

"Yeah, I hope that too," Sonny muttered, and then I returned to Jen's bed, laid down, closed her eyes, and then I loosened my control over her before I went to sleep myself.


	9. Help Coming?

As it turned out, things between Jen and Sonny didn't get patched up as quickly as Sonny had hoped. And it wasn't easy going for me and Jen either, but we talked about it the day after, after Jen's Statistics quiz, and we managed to come to an understanding. Jen was very understandably angry that I had gone behind her back and took control of her body while she was sleeping to find ways to keep myself in her head during soccer games (with Sonny's help, and Sonny was also coordinating with the other Controllers on campus who were also playing other sports). I told her that I was doing this for her, because I had noticed that Jen had begun to slip back into her old personality (and I do mean her old personality, the personality that Jen had before I had infested her and helped her change). Jen was beginning to withdraw into her shell once again, keeping to herself and not really talking to anyone else. And it was beginning to affect not just her play on the pitch but also her campus life as well. I wanted what was best for Jen, and I knew that she wanted the best for me as well, which is why she doesn't like the decision to keep me out of her head while she plays. Jen understands why, don't get me wrong, but as she said, just because she understands why she has to do it doesn't mean that she actually wants to do it.

So Jen and I were now okay, and she had given me permission to use her body while she sleeps so long as it doesn't involve me doing anything that she wouldn't have done by herself or even with me. Jen was still mad at Sonny for going behind her back, though. Sonny was her friend, she explained to me, and Jen expected her friends to tell her anything that she was planning to do if it had anything to do with her or me. And I understood where she was coming from, but I also told Jen that Sonny was another person, another human, and not a Yeerk. Expecting Sonny to tell her everything was too much to ask for the other girl. Jen accepted my logic, but that didn't stop her from continuing to fume at Sonny, and the two of them didn't even talk at all for the next three days, not even during training.

That state of affairs remained until one Monday morning when Jen and Sonny happened to sit beside each other inside the computer section of the university library. Jen was doing research for her homework on the Theories of Personality but was currently browsing for memes when we noticed someone sitting down on the terminal beside Jen's. Jen looked out of the corner of her eye and saw that it was actually Sonny. _Of all the people in this campus_ , she muttered to herself.

It was obvious that there was tension in the air between the two. After that brief sidewards glance, Jen was doing her utter best not to look Sonny's way, and I could imagine that Sonny was doing the same on her side. It was pretty clear that both women had been doing their best to avoid each other, but now here they were.

 _Jen, isn't there something that you would like to say to Sonny?_ I asked her. I knew that I sound very much like a human parent trying to get their child to apologize.

((Really? I'm not saying anything until she does,)) Jen replied. Just like a human child would say as well.

 _But what if she's waiting for you to say something first?_

((Then we'll both just be sitting here with our thumbs up our asses until either one of us gives up or leaves. And I've got time to burn.))

 _But not as much as Sonny has. She just got here, while you've already been here for thirty minutes. And the librarians seem to be actively reminding people they've only got one hour on the computers today._

((Fine with me. That means I don't have to talk to her for a few more hours at least.))

 _Wow. You really are willing to drag this whole thing out just because of your pride. Well, you've had your time to sulk, and now it's time for you to patch things up. Unless you want me to do the apologizing for you. Do you want me to do the apologizing for you?_

((No! Most definitely not!)) Jen shouted. ((And we both know that if _you_ do it, it won't count. I won't count it and neither will Sonny.))

 _All right, fine. Have it your way. But with the Kandrona as my witness, I think that what you and Sonny are doing right now is completely stupid, illogical, and immature. There! I said it! You're immature!_

((I am most definitely _not_ immature! I am not! I am a mature, independent and responsible woman, I'll have you know!))

 _Not immature, my tail! Who still needs at least one to two pillows in her arms before she goes to sleep? Who's still afraid of needles? Whose room is still half-full of teddy bears and turtles and other stuffed animals?_

((That has nothing to do with the current situation whatsoever!)) Jen insisted. ((All those things you mentioned are just me being me! This is completely and entirely different! Sonny broke my trust, man! And so did you! I'm only talking to you right now so you know how things stand! So don't expect me to be so quick to talk to Sonny right now!))

However, I didn't have to wait long for the silence between these two girls to be finally broken. And no, it wasn't Jen who did it just to spite me or whatever. It was actually Sonny who made the first move. I suspect that even she was getting tired of all the nonsense that she and Jen were doing but recognized that Jen was too proud for her own good to say or do anything first.

"So, how did that Statistics quiz of yours go?" Sonny asked. She was still looking resolutely at her own computer's screen, but at least she had finally made verbal contact with her friend.

"Meh, it was all right, I guess," Jen replied, also not looking anywhere else but her screen. "I actually got an A on the quiz. I'm surprised about it like you are. Imagine that. Me getting an A in a math-related subject. If I didn't know any better, I'd say the end of the world is nigh. How about you? How did your term paper go?" she asked back.

"Barely finished it a few hours ago," Sonny said. "I haven't even slept for real yet. Just closed my eyes for twenty minutes and then it's off to class for me already. You know, I could actually be taking the time right now to sleep but now I've got this essay on Hemingway I've got to write. And I'd rather have all of my references ready and waiting before I inevitably sleep in the middle of my next class."

What followed was an awkward silence in which it was obvious to see that both girls finally wanted to get this little quarrel done and over with, but both of them still believed that they were in the right and that they didn't have to apologize for what they had done. They both knew what the solution to their problem was, but neither of them wanted to do it because of their pride. At least they were both talking to each other again, even if they didn't want to look at each other because neither of them wanted to be the one to break up the tension. But Jen eventually did do it, and I didn't even have to force her to do anything.

Jen turned in her chair to face Sonny, who finally turned to look at her as well. "You know, Sonny, that I don't really like surprises at all," Jen said. "Well, I don't mean all surprises, but I didn't like the surprise that you and Yemra pulled on me last Friday. But it's not just that. You made Yemra go behind my back as well. You made her take control of me while I was sleeping. Yemra never took control of me without my permission until… until this. Now I feel like a puppet, a meatbag, a suit to be used when needed and kept in the closet when not. Do you know how bad that feels? Do you want to know how it feels?"

"Hey, Jen, in my defense, Yemra did everything on her own accord," Sonny replied, raising her hands to her chest in a defensive gesture. "She was the one who thought up of everything. She was the one who made contact with me first. And she asked me for my help, and I just gave it to her."

"What!?" And then to me, Jen asked, ((Is that true, Yems?))

 _Yes, Jen, it is_ , I said defiantly. _But I already told you why I did it. It's because you're turning back to the old Jen, girl. And, I'm sorry to say this, but I don't really like that girl compared to you. I prefer the present day Jennifer Carson, thank you very much._

To say that Jennifer was pissed off at this new development was a massive understatement. The good thing was that she didn't blow her lid like the last time that she came across something unpleasant, but that being said, I could still feel the anger bubbling up inside of her. I thought I could even physically feel the heat of her fury on the underside of my flattened Yeerk body. ((When I get the time, you and I are going to have a _very_ long talk!)) she told me.

 _You know, you sounded just like your mother when you said that,_ I said.

((Shut up!))

 _So much just like your mother_ , I added just to mess with her a little bit more.

"So, does this mean that you forgive me?" Sonny asked. "And that you're sorry?"

"Man, I don't even know right now," Jen replied. "I don't think I even want to! Just… let me think about it, all right? And don't ask me about it until I'm ready, okay? I don't wanna deal with this shit again right now!"

"All right, fine, you said it," Sonny muttered as she shrugged her shoulders. She knew how far she could push Jen on this particular subject, and she knew that she had just gotten there right now. Both girls, ahem, woman, turned back to their respective computers and continued doing what they had been doing before their conversation had interrupted them. Sonny went back to her research while Jen went back to her memes.

Suddenly, the silence in the library was broken by a yelp of surprise from Sonny. "What the fuck!?" Jen exclaimed as she jumped in her own surprise at Sonny's scream. "Did you click on a screamer clickbait link or what?"

"No, no, it's nothing like that," Sonny replied once she had gotten over her own shock. "Someone finally replied to my emails. I mean, thank God someone finally did reply, but still… that was a long time coming, that was. I almost gave up on all of them…"

 _What? Let me see!_ I demanded. _Jen! Tell Sonny to open that email now!_

((All right, Yems, calm down!)) Jen told me. ((No need to be all in a hurry about this!)) And then physically, she said, "Uh, Sonny? Are you gonna keep talking or are you gonna open that email?"

"Oh," Sonny said, as if she had just realized that that was something that she needed to do before she could actually continue celebrating. "All right, here goes…" She moved the cursor over the link to the email and clicked.

* * *

 **To:** sonia. ma .allison1021 at gmail . com  
 **From:** Andrew _ East at MGHLaw . com  
 **Subject:** Your email dated September 1st

Dear Ms. Torres,

I am Andrew East, attorney and junior partner at the firm of Maguire, Garfield, and Holland Law Associates. I am writing to you to inform you that the firm has decided to take up your case and that of your friend Miss J.C. and that I have been assigned by the firm to take a closer look at your case.

I would very much like to meet you and your friend in person. Will this Thursday be all right for the both of you? If you have any other questions then feel free to contact me at this email address or my contact numbers, provided below. I do recommend contacting me by phone as I will be able to respond quicker to your inquiries through that.

Thank you for approaching Maguire, Garfield, and Holland with your case, and I do hope that I can get in touch with you soon.

Sincerely,

Andrew East  
Junior Partner  
Maguire, Garfield, and Holland and Associates Law Firm

* * *

"Oh, my God," Sonny muttered. "It's happening. It really is happening. Holy shit!" She then took out her phone and immediately added the attorney's contact details into her phonebook. "I mean, like, dude! It's really happening! Oh, my gosh. Maybe there is still good in the world after all."

"Yeah," Jen muttered. "Maybe there is." She tried to play it cool, and to anyone looking at that scene, she looked calm about it; definitely not as excited about it as Sonny was. But one of the benefits of being wrapped around the brain of someone involved in that scene was that I got to know what was really going on in their mind, and what was going on in Jennifer Carson's mind was, if not the exact opposite of calm and collected, then something really close to it. Jen had always played off having to take me out of her head during training and games as a necessary evil, something that had to be done because the consequences of not doing so were way worse than actually going ahead and doing it. But I could always feel the underlying sadness and disappointment in her whenever I got back into her head, even though I chose more times than not to not address it. It's not as if Jen didn't say anything about it though; she was always telling me stories of what happened during training or the games themselves, always with the caveat that "You would have enjoyed it more had you been there, Yems" because she knew that I loved soccer as much as she did. And now here was a chance, an opportunity, for me to get to enjoy "the beautiful game" once again.

Of course, when you think about it, Jen wasn't the only one who had to be affected by this conundrum. There had to be other Controllers out there who were also athletes, whether in college or the minor leagues (and maybe even the major leagues, but acceptance of Yeerks hadn't gone that far yet as far as I'm aware), and some of them surely would be feeling the same things that Jen did whenever she had to let me out before a game. But surely someone would have already said something about it before a certain Sonia Torres did, wouldn't they? Apparently not. It just shows that while Yeerks and Controllers have finally been able to gain recognition as beings and citizens with the same rights as that of normal (and uninfested) humans, we are still being treated differently, and both Yeerks and their hosts haven't yet had the courage to speak up against this sort of treatment. At least until now, and it wasn't even an actual human hosting a Yeerk who had spoken up but the friend of an affected Controller. Well, someone had to get the ball rolling, right?

* * *

A/N: So this is a shorter chapter than usual because writer's block really hit me hard on this one and I just wanted to get this done and over with. I also have chapters in other works which are getting backed up in my mind because I can't get this chapter finished fast enough. I promise that I will do better in the future and maybe not try brute-forcing my way through another chapter that's got me stuck. Oh, and while you're here, do feel free to leave a review or a comment telling me what you think. No matter if it's positive or negative, I want to know what you really think of my work. Thanks! – GR


End file.
